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THE 


3 


CHRISTMAS HIRELINGS 


a IRovel 



M. E. BRADDON 

AUTHOR OF “ JOSHUA HAGGARD’S DAUGHTER ” 
“THE VENETIANS” ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED 



^NOV SI 1393 


NEW YORK 


^ **ry 


HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
1894 


V 


\ "S. <-A 

\ " \ 


.vAA - 5 


Copyright, 1893, by Harper & Brothers. 


All rights reserved . 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


“ ‘ I shouldn’t LIKE MY MOTHER TO BE AS FAT 


AS YOURS, OR AS RED ’” . . 

• 

• • 


Frontispiece 

“ SHE WAS FULL OF DARING, A ROMP AND 

A 

TOM- 




boy” 



Facing page 

22 

“SHE WAS LONDON-BRED, A VERY BAD WALKER” 

(( 

u 

26 

“SIR JOHN WATCHED HER CURIOUSLY” 

• 

• • 

u 

u 

80 

“THE CINDERELLAS I WAS missing” . 

• 

• • 

u 

u 

138 

“WHO WAS IT FOLLOWED THE DOCTOR 

TO 

THE 




DOOR OF THE SICK-ROOM AND WAITED 

?” . 

u 

u 

166 

“ ‘ THIS IS MOTHER !’ SAID MOPPET ” . . 

• 

• • 

u 

ti 

206 


“ sir John’s affection seemed to have skipped 

» « it 


A GENERATION 


208 







THE 


CHRISTMAS HIRELINGS 


PROLOGUE 

The scene was the library at Penlyon 
Place — commonly called, for shortness, 
Place. The personages were Sir John Pen- 
lyon, a great landed proprietor, and a fine 
gentleman of the early Victorian school; 
his niece, Miss Adela Hawberk, a smart 
young lady, whose paternal home was in 
South Kensington ; and Mr. Danby, the use- 
ful friend, whose home was everywhere. 
Home of his own Mr. Danby had none. He 
had drifted lightly on the stream of life for 
the last forty years, living in other people’s 
houses, and, more or less, at other people’s 
expense; yet there lived not the man or 
woman who would have dared to describe 


1 


2 


Mr. Danby as a sponge or a toady, as any- 
body’s hanger-on or parasite. Mr. Danby 
only went where he was wanted ; and the 
graces of his manner and the qualities of 
his mind were such that Mr. Danby was 
wanted everywhere. He had invitations 
three years deep. His engagements were as 
far in the future as the calculations in the 
nautical almanac. Some people, who had 
been trying for years to get Mr. Danby to 
their houses, compared him to that star 
whose inhabitants may now be contemplat- 
ing the Crimean War of 1854. 

Sir John Penlyon and Mr. Danby had 
been school-fellows at Eton, and chums at 
Christchurch ; and, whomsoever else he dis- 
appointed, Mr. Danby never omitted his an- 
nual visits to Penlyon Place. He Christ- 
mased there, and he Eastered there, and he 
knew the owner of the fine old Tudor house 
inside and out, his vices and his virtues, his 
weaknesses and his prejudices. 

“ That there Danby,” said Sir John’s valet, 
“ can turn the old chap round his finger ; 
but he’s a good feller, is Danby, a gentle- 


man to the marrer, and nobody’s any the 
worse for ’is hinfluence.” 

The library at Penlyon was one of those 
rooms in which to live seems enough for 
bliss. A lovely old room, full of fantastic 
lights and shadows in the December gloam- 
ing ; a spacious room, lined with books in 
the most exquisite bindings, for the binding 
of his books was more to Sir John than the 
letter-press inside. He was very fond of his 
library ; he was very fond of his books. He 
looked at the bindings; and he read the 
newspapers and magazines which were heap- 
ed on a carved oak table at one end of the 
room. 

Miss Hawberk sal in a low chair, with her 
feet on the fender, apparently lost in admi- 
ration of her Queen Anne shoes. She had 
lately come in from a long walk on the moor 
with the useful friend, and had changed her 
clump -soled boots for these pointed toes, 
which set off the high instep that was con- 
sidered a family mark of the Penlyons. A 
flat-footed Penlyon would have been thrust 
out and repudiated by the rest of the clan, 


4 


perhaps, like a sick cow to which the herd 
gives the coujp-de-grace. 

Sir John was standing on the hearth-rug, 
with his back to the crackling wood fire, 
contemplating his books as the fire-glow lit 
up their varied bindings. Mr. Danby was 
resting luxuriously after his moorland walk 
in quite the most comfortable chair in the 
room, not too near the fire, for Danby was 
careful of his complexion. At sixty -three 
years of age a man who means to be good- 
looking to the end has to be careful of his 
complexion. 

Danby was a slenderly-built man of mid- 
dle height. He had never been handsome, 
but he had neat, inoffensive features, bright 
gray eyes, light brown hair, with a touch of 
silver in it, and perfect hands and feet. He 
reminded elderly people of that accomplished 
and amiable gentleman Charles Matthews 
the younger. 

Miss Hawberk was tall and handsome. 
She prided herself, in the first place, upon 
being every inch a Penlyon, and, in the 
second place, upon being undeniably smart. 


5 


She belonged to a set which, in the London 
season, sees a good deal of the Royalties, 
and, like most people who are in touch with 
personages of the blood royal, she very often 
talked about them. 

So much for the actors in the social drama, 
which was in this very hour to begin at 
Penlyon Castle. The curtain is up, and the 
first words of the play drop quietly from 
the lips of Sir John. 

Sir John. Christmas again, Danby ! I 
think of all the boring seasons Christmas is 
the most boring. 

Adela ( reproachfully ). My dear uncle, 
that sounds like forgetting what Christmas 
means. 

Sir John. What does Christmas mean to 
any British householder? Firstly, an extra 
Sunday wedged into the week — and at my 
age the longest week is too short, and all the 
Sundays are too near together ; secondly, an 
overwhelming shower of stationery in the 
shape of pamphlets, booklets, circulars, and 
reports of every imaginable kind of philan- 
thropic schemes for extracting money from 


6 


the well-to-do classes — schemes so many and 
so various that a man will harden his heart 
against the cry of distress rather than he 
will take the trouble to consider those plans 
for relieving it; thirdly, a servants’ ball, 
which generally sets all the servants by the 
ears, and sometimes sets the house on fire ; 
fourthly, a cloud of letters from poor rela- 
tives and friends one would willingly forget, 
only to be answered decently with a check. 
I won’t speak of bills, for the so-called 
Christmas bills are held back till January, 
to imbitter the beginning of the year, and 
to remind a man that he was born to 
trouble, as the sparks fly upward. 

Sir John takes up the poker, and illus- 
trates this passage of Holy Writ by striking 
a tremendous shower of sparks out of a 
burning pine log. 

Danby. I don’t think you need mind 
Christmas. You are rich enough to satisfy 
everybody, even the philanthropic gentle- 
men ; or you may plunge for two or three of 
the best-known charities, and give a round 
sum to each of them. That is what I would 


V 


do if I were a rich man. And as for festiv- 
ities of any kind, why, yon and I are too old, 
and Miss Hawberk is too sensible to want 
any fuss of that kind ; so we can just put up 
with the extra Sunday, and pull up the ar- 
rears of our correspondence between lunch- 
eon and dinner, while the servants are lin- 
gering over their Christmas dessert. 

Miss Hawberk (with a faint sigh). That 
is all very well, but I think Christmas Day 
ought to be different from other days, some- 
how. 

Sir John (impatiently). Somehow, yes, 
but which how ? What are we, civilized 
people, with plenty of common-sense and no 
silly sentiment — what are we to do year 
after year in order to lash ourselves into the 
humor for Christmas mirth and Christmas 
benevolence? It was all very well for a 
miserly old churl like Dickens’s Scrooge to 
break out suddenly into kindness and jovial- 
ity, after a long life of avarice. Giving 
away turkeys and drinking punch were new 
sensations for him. But for us, who have 
been giving away turkeys and putting our 


sovereigns in the plate for nearly fifty Christ- 
mas Days! You can’t expect me to be en- 
thusiastic about Christmas, Adela, any more 
than you would expect me to hang up my 
stocking when I go to bed on Christmas Eve. 

Miss Hawberk. Oh, that stocking ! How 
old I feel when I think of it ! How firmly 
I believed in Santa Claus, and how happy I 
used to be on Christmas morning when I 
found pretty things in my stocking, or heap- 
ed up at the end of my bed ! The stocking 
would not hold a quarter of my presents. 
I know one year I had a sweet little sketch 
of a kitten sent by the Marchioness of Lome. 
She had seen me playing in a corner with 
my kitten a week or two before, when she 
was taking tea with mother, don’t you know. 

Sir John ( looking as if he neither knew nor 
eared about this feline incident). Stockings, 
presents, Santa Claus ! Ah, there you’ve hit 
the mark, Adela. Christmas is a splendid 
institution in a house where there are chil- 
dren. Christmas can hardly be made too 
much of where there are children in ques- 
tion. Ho, Adela, I am not such a heathen 


as you think. I have not forgotten the 
meaning of Christmas. I can still remem- 
ber that it is a festival kept in reverential 
memory of a Holy Child. If you were not 
your mother’s only daughter and grown up 
— if somehow or other I had a pack of chil- 
dren belonging to me, I would keep Christ- 
mas with the best — keep it as it ought to be 
kept. But the Penlyons are a vanishing 
race. I have no children to look to me for 
gladness. 

A Silence. Adela Hawberk looks at the 
fire gravely, thoughtfully, mournfully, and a 
blush mounts to her fair forehead, and slowly 
fades away. Perhaps she is thinking of a 
certain young officer in a cavalry regiment, 
to whom she is not actually engaged, but 
who may some day be her husband if the 
home authorities are agreeable. And she 
thinks of a dim, far-off time when she and 
her husband, and possibly their children, 
may be Christmassing at Penlyon Castle. 
The vision seems very remote, almost impos- 
sible; yet such things have been. Sir John 
stares at his books resolutely. 


10 


Danby {who has been dropping asleep in 
his dushy corner , rousing himself suddenly). 
Children! yes, of course. Nobody knows 
how to enjoy Christmas if he has no children 
to make happy. If one has no children of 
one’s own, one ought to hire some for the 
Christmas - week — children to cram with 
mince -pies and plum - pudding ; children to 
take to the pantomime; children to let off 
crackers; children to take on the ice. I 
have any number of godchildren scattered 
about among the houses of my friends, and 
I feel half a century younger when I am 
romping with them. What do you think of 
my notion, Miss Hawberk ? Don’t you think 
it would be a good dodge to hire some chil- 
dren for Christmas Day. Your cottages 
swarm with brats. We should have only to 
pick and choose. 

Miss Hawberk:. Cottagers’ children gener- 
ally have colds in their heads. I don’t think 
one could stand cottagers’ children for more 
than an hour or two. I am very fond of 
children, but I like them to belong to my 
own class. 


11 


Danby. I understand. You want little 
ladies and gentlemen, with whom you could 
romp at your ease. I believe even that 
could be managed. What do you say, Sir 
John ? Shall we hire some children for the 
Christmas- week, iust to amuse Miss Haw- 
berk? 

Sir John. You may do anything in the 
world that is idiotic and fantastical, so long 
as you don’t intrude your folly upon me. 
When you do make a fool of yourself you 
generally contrive to do the thing pleasantly. 
If Adela would like some children playing 
about the house next week, why she can ask 
them, or you can ask them, and as long as 
they behave decently I shall not complain. 

Danby. You don’t quite grasp my idea, 
Sir John. This is not to be a question of 
inviting children — children out of our own 
set, spoiled and pampered after the modern 
fashion, children who would come as guests 
and would give themselves airs. Ho. What 
I propose is to hire some children — children 
of respectable birth and good manners, but 
whose parents are poor enough to accept the 


12 


fee which } 7 our liberality may offer for the 
hire of their olive branches. 

Sir John. My dear Danby, the notion is 
preposterous — except in St. Giles’s, where 
the babies are let out to beggars by the day 
or week, there can be no such people. 

Danby. There is every kind and grade of 
people; but one must know where to look 
for them. Do you give me permission to 
hire two or three — say three — cleanly, re- 
spectable children, to assist Miss Hawberk 
to get through a solitary Christmas in a 
lonely country-house, with two old fogies 
like you and me ? 

Sir John. That depends. Where do you 
propose to find your children? Hot in the 
immediate neighborhood, unless you want 
to make me the laughing-stock of the parish. 
Amuse yourselves to your heart’s content ; 
but I must beg you to leave me uncompro- 
mised by your foolishness. 

Miss Hawberk. The Sheik is getting an- 
gry, Mr. Danby. We had better give up 
your funny idea. 

Sir John. Ho, no, let Danby indulge his 


13 


fancy. Danby’s fancies are always success- 
ful, however absurd they may seem to rea- 
sonable beings. 

Danby {throwing his head back upon the 
chair cushion and laughing his joyous laugh , 
a laugh that always puts other people in good 
spirits). There spoke my noble Sheik — the 
Prince of Penlyon — the man with the blood 
of Cornish kings in his veins. We may have 
our little bit of reasonable Christmas festiv- 
ity, Miss Hawberk and I, and you won’t 
mind. But how about the fee for the chil- 
dren ? We must pay for our little mummers. 
We must compensate the parents or parent 
for the sacrifice of Christmas pleasures — the 
happy morning faces over the stocking-full 
of toys — the glowing evening faces round 
the humble fireplace, watching the chestnuts 
roasting on the bars. You don’t know what 
a little world of joy humble folks lose when 
they don’t have their children about them at 
Christmas. 

Sir John. Confound the fee ! Give them 
twenty— fifty pounds, if you like ; but don’t 
talk to me of poor children. I will have no 


14 


poor children at Penlyon. Adela is quite 
right. They have always colds in their 
heads ; they don’t know how to treat decent 
furniture; they would scroop the heavy 
chairs on the oak floor; they would leave 
prints of their horrid little thumbs on my 
books, and though the imprint of the human 
thumb may be very interesting to the de- 
tective physiologist, I am not a student of 
thumbs, and I want to keep my books clean. 

Danby. I am not thinking of poor chil- 
dren in your sense of the word. Though I 
am thinking of people for whom your check 
of, say, fifty pounds, would be a boon. 

Sir John. Poor relations of your own, I 
suppose, Danby. Don’t be offended. Every- 
body has poor relations. 

Miss Hawberk. Dear Princess Christian 
has often told me how much she has to do 
for some of her German connections. 

Danby. You’ve hit it. I am thinking of 
some poor relations. 

Sir John. Good. If they have any of 
your blood they are sure to be little ladies 
and gentlemen. Only — forgive me, Danby — 


15 


poverty is apt to be pushing. I shall write 
my check for a hundred, since the little peo- 
ple belong to you ; but don’t let this Christ- 
mas visit be the thin end of the wedge. 
Don’t let me hear any more of the little 
dears unless I myself wish it. 

Danby. You shall see them and hear of 
them no more after old Christmas Day un- 
less at your own desire. Remember, it is not 
a visit ; it is a transaction. You hire these 
little creatures for your amusement — our 
amusement, if you like — just as you would 
hire a conjurer for a juvenile party. You 
pay them their fee, and you have done with 
them. 

Sik John. That is as it should be. 

Sir John walks across the room to his 
desk, lights a candle, and writes his check, 
payable to Horatio Danby, for one hundred 
guineas, while two footmen are bringing in 
lamps and afternoon tea. 

Danby ( t folding up the check). Miss Haw- 
berk, did I not rightly call your uncle a 
prince ? 


( The scene closes.) 


CHAPTER I 


Sir John Penlyon was generally described 
by his friends as a man of peculiar temper. 
He was not a bad-tempered man ; indeed, he 
had a certain princely graciousness which 
overlooked small offences. He was not easily 
made angry ; but, on the other hand, when 
deeply offended, he was vindictive, and nursed 
his wrath from year’s end to year’s end, re- 
fusing ever again to touch the hand of the 
offender. He had reigned at Penlyon as a 
lord of the soil ever since he left the univer- 
sity, coming into his own at three-and-twenty 
years of age. He had married late, married 
a very young woman, dowerless, but of good 
birth, who loved him far better than he ever 
believed during her lifetime. She died when 
the younger of her two daughters was only 
six years old, and it was some years after 
she had been laid at rest in the family vault 
of the Penlyons that Sir John found an old 


IV 


diary hidden in a secret drawer at the back 
of the secretaire in his wife’s dressing-room ; 
a girlish diary, written at intervals ; a record 
of thoughts and feelings rather than of the 
facts and occupations of daily life ; a record 
which told the widower how fondly he had 
been beloved, and how many a careless 
wound he had inflicted upon that tender 
creature whose gentle countenance was hid- 
den from his sight forever. 

The reading of his wife’s journal left in Sir 
John Penlyon’s mind the burden of a lasting 
remorse. He had believed that when the 
daughter of an impoverished house, his junior 
by twenty years, had accepted his stately 
offer of marriage, she had been influenced as 
much by questions of convenience as he him- 
self had been. He was marrying because the 
time had come when he ought to marry, un- 
less he wanted to sink into hopeless bachelor- 
hood and loneliness. She was marrying be- 
cause marriage with a magnate in the land 
would give her fortune and position. Fixed 
in this notion of equal indifference on both 
sides, he had been studiously polite and kind 
2 


18 


to his young wife ; but he had never taken 
the trouble to sound the depths of that girl- 
ish heart. He had taken everything for 
granted. 

There had been a domestic disappointment, 
too, in his married life, calm and undisturbed 
as it was. Two daughters had been born at 
Penlyon Castle, but no son. And Sir John 
Penlyon ardently longed for a son. His chief 
motive in marrying at over forty years of age 
was the desire of a son and heir. He was 
angry at the thought that a distant cousin 
should ever bear his title, and come to reign 
at Penlyon. The estate was strictly entailed, 
and that second cousin, a soldier in a line 
regiment, must needs succeed if Sir John died 
without leaving a son. 

The diary reminded him of many sins ; re- 
minded him how cold and unloving he had 
been to those baby daughters. The poor dead 
mother’s girlish handwriting had put every 
little slight on record ; not in anger, but in 
sorrow. The widower came upon such en- 
tries as this : “ I think it must be because he 
does not care for me that he is so neglectful 


19 


of Lilian. Every one says she is a lovely 
child. It can’t be because I am fond of her 
that I think her so beautiful. The servants 
all worship her. Mr. Danby adores her, and 
she adores him. I couldn’t help crying the 
other day — I had to run out of the room, or 
I should have made an absolute fool of my- 
self before my husband — when I saw Mr. 
Danby playing with her, going on his hands 
and knees under the billiard-table to play at 
bo-peep with her, just as if he had been her 
father ; while Sir J ohn sat reading his paper 
at the other end of the room, and only looked 
up once to complain of the noise — Lilian’s 
sweet little silvery laugh! How could he 
call that a noise !” 

And this : “I took Sibyl to the library 
yesterday morning when her father was sit- 
ting there alone. It was her birthday — her 
third birthday — and I thought I might pre- 
sume upon that. I opened the door a little 
way and looked in. He was sitting at his 
desk writing. I ought to have waited till 
he was disengaged. I whispered to her to 
go to him and give him a big birthday kiss, 


20 


and she ran in, toddling across the room in 
her pretty bine shoes, so busy, so happy, and 
she caught hold of his arm as he wrote, and 
lifted herself up on tiptoe, and said, ‘Papa, 
big birsday kiss,’ in her funny little baby- 
talk. He put down his pen, and he stooped 
down to kiss her; but a moment after he 
rang his spring bell two or three times, and 
called out, ‘ What is this child doing here, 
roaming about the house alone? Where is 
her nurse?’ He was very kind and polite 
when he looked round and saw me standing 
at the door, and when I begged his pardon 
for having disturbed him; but I could see 
that he was bored, and I took Sibyl away 
directly. We met Mr. Danby in the corri- 
dor with an armful of toys. What a useful 
good soul he is, and how sorry I shall be 
when he has left us to go to the Duchess of 
Endsleigh.” 

There were many entries of the same nat- 
ure — womanly regrets, recorded again and 
again : “ I wonder why he married me.” 
“I wonder whether he once loved some- 
body very dearly and couldn’t marry her.” 


21 


“ I think there must be some reason for his 
not caring for me. I ought not to complain, 
even to this stupid old book — but the book 
is like an old friend. I sit staring at my 
name and the date, written by my old gov- 
erness at the Manor House, and recalling 
those careless, thoughtless days when my 
sisters and I used to think our Ollendorff 
exercises the worst troubles we had in this 
world — before mother began to be an inva- 
lid — before father used to confide all his 
difficulties to us girls — the debts, the ten- 
ants that wouldn’t pay, the roofs that want- 
ed new slating. Oh, how long ago it all 
seems ! I have no money troubles now. 
Father has had legacies, and everything is 
going smoothly at home. And yet I feel 
sometimes as if my heart were slowly turn- 
ing to ice. 

“ ‘ Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, 

That time has shaken into frost.’ ” 

Sir John Penlyon never forgot the reading 
of that diary. He remembered the very day 
and hour when looking for a missing list of 


22 


family jewels — jewels which his dead wife 
had worn on state occasions, and which were 
to go back to the bank, and to lie in darkness, 
like her who had worn them — he had come 
upon that old German copy-book, rolled up 
and thrust far back in the secret drawer, 
tied with a shabby old ribbon. He remem- 
bered sitting by the fireless hearth, in the 
dismantled dressing-room, disused since his 
wife’s death. He remembered the dull gray 
autumn sky, the rain drifting across the lead- 
en sea, and the shags standing on the rocks 
drenched and drooping, all nature in low 
spirits. 

The reading of that record of unhappiness, 
so meekly borne, was not without one good 
result. Sir John took more notice of his two 
girls than he had ever done in their mother’s 
lifetime. Sibyl, the younger, contrived more 
particularly to find her way into his heart. 
She was stronger and more vivacious than 
her elder sister. She was full of daring, a 
romp, and a tomboy. Lilian was more like 
her mother, and was gentle and shrinking 
and subdued, as her mother had been in the 






23 


presence of the husband she loved and feared. 
Sibyl had a nature unacquainted with fear ; 
and her father fancied he saw in her all the 
highest qualities of the Penlyons — beauty, 
strength, courage. 

“ If she had been but a boy,” he sometimes 
said to himself, with a profound sigh. 

It seemed a hard thing that such a splen- 
did creature must needs be cheated out of 
the heritage of her father and grandfather, 
and of many generations before them, only 
because she happened to be a daughter in- 
stead of a son. The Penlyon estate had 
been growing in wealth and importance 
while all those generations of the past were 
growing from youth to age, through life to 
death. The Penlyons had developed a great 
mining district, far off yonder southward 
towards Truro. They had added farm to 
farm between Boscastle and Bodmin. Ev- 
erything had prospered with this proud and 
ancient race ; and between St. Germains and 
Tintagel there was no such family as the Pen- 
lyons of Penlyon Castle. 

Sir John was foolishly indulgent to his 


24 


motherless daughters during the first four or 
five years of his widowhood, making amends 
to them for all that had been wanting in his 
conduct to their mother. His remorse was 
not for sins of commission, but for sins of 
omission. He knew that he had not been 
unkind to his wife. He had only failed to un- 
derstand her. The poor little diary in the 
German exercise -book had told him how 
dearly he had been beloved, and how dull 
and ungrateful he had been. 

For nearly five years after his wife’s death 
Sir John lived at Penlyon Castle, managed 
his estates, hunted and shot, and in summer 
did a little yachting along that wild north 
coast, and southward by Penzance and Fal- 
mouth, and as far as the Start Point. In all 
those five years he had his two children much 
about him, took them on his yacht, taught 
them to ride, and was enraptured with the 
pluck and the endurance shown by the young- 
er, whether on sea or land. She rode a pony 
that her elder sister dared not mount. Her 
father took her with him when he went out 
with the harriers, and she rode up and down 


25 


those wild hills with a dash and cleverness 
that enchanted the squires and farmers of 
the district. 

During all this time the girls were in a 
manner running wild. They had a nursery 
governess to look after them whose word 
went for very little, and who soon came to 
understand that Sir John Penlyon’s daugh- 
ters were to do as they liked ; and that both 
learning and elegant accomplishments count- 
ed for very little at Penlyon Castle. 

“Look after their health, Miss Peterson, 
and see that they change their shoes when 
they come in from walking,” said Sir John. 
“ All the rest is leather and prunella.” 

The two girls would have got the better 
of their governess in any case; but Sir John 
being avowedly on the side of ignorance, the 
poor young lady had no chance of making 
them take kindly to education. They loved 
the gardens and the hills and the wild sea- 
beach and those narrow walks which looked 
to Miss Peterson like mere ledges on the face 
of the cliff, and where she could hardly stand 
for a minute without feeling giddy. They 


26 


were strong and bold and free in every move- 
ment of their young limbs, while she was 
London-bred, a weakling, and a very bad walk- 
er. Her feet used to ache on those grand 
moorland roads, and her poor sick soul long 
for a Royal Blue, or any other friendly om- 
nibus, to take her in and carry her home- 
ward. She was one of those people who 
say they are very fond of the country in sum- 
mer. The breezy October days, the white 
mists of winter, filled her with sadness and 
dejection. 

The two little girls were kind to her after 
their free-and-easy fashion ; but they treated 
her with a good-natured contempt. She 
was afraid of a horse, she was afraid of the 
sea, she was afraid of being blown off the 
cliff when the wind was high, and she 
could not walk two miles without feeling 
tired. She confessed to being troubled with 
corns. 

“ Miss Peterson has corns !” cried Sibyl. 
“ Isn’t it funny \ I thought it was only old 
people who had corns.” 

This free-and-easy life went on for five 












































t 


\ 





































































































27 


years. The children throve and grew apace 
— did what they liked, ate what they liked, 
and were as idle as they liked. The effect of 
this indulgence upon their physical health 
was all that the fondest father could desire. 
The doctor from Boscastle complained laugh- 
ingly that the Penlyon nursery wasn’t worth 
a five-pound note to him from year’s end to 
year’s end. 

“You never have anything the matter 
with you,” he said, as the children skipped 
round him in the road, fond of him in their 
small way, as one of the funny personages of 
the district. “ I don’t believe I have earned 
seven and sixpence out of either of you since 
I lanced your gums.” 

“Did you lance my gums?” cried Sibyl. 
“ How funny !” 

“ You didn’t think it funny then, I can tell 
you,” said the doctor grimly. 

“ Didn’t I ? What’s it like ? Lance them 
now,” said Sibyl, curling up her red lips and 
opening her mouth very wide. 

“ Ho, thank you. You’d bite. You look 
as if you could bite!” laughed the doctor. 


28 


“ I tell you what it is, I believe Miss Peter- 
son is a witch — one of our ancient Cornish 
witches who has turned herself into a nice- 
looking young woman.” Mr. Nicholls could 
not so far perjure himself as to say pretty. 
“ Miss Peterson has bewitched you both. 
She has charmed away the measles and the 
whooping-cough. She has cheated me out of 
my just rights.” 

Miss Peterson heard him with a pale smile, 
shifting her weight from the more painful 
foot to the foot that pained her a little less. 
The children went leaping and bounding 
along the road, the embodiment of healthy, 
high-spirited childhood. 

Sir John praised Miss Peterson for her 
care of them, and rewarded her as the school- 
board mistresses are rewarded, according to 
results ; only the results in this case were 
physical and not mental, and Sir John’s 
Christmas present of a silk gown or a ten- 
pound note was given because his daughters 
were healthy and happy rather than because 
they made any progress with their educa- 
tion. In sober truth, they knew a little less 


29 


than the village children of the same age at 
the parish school. 

At the end of those five years that pleas' 
ant life came to an abrupt close. North 
Cornwall found out all at once that it could 
not continue to prosper and to hold its own 
in the march of progress unless it were rep- 
resented by Sir John Penlyon. Eadical in- 
fluences were abroad in the land. The 
Church was in danger, was indeed being fast 
pushed to the wall by the force of Dissent, 
its superior in numerical strength. North 
Cornwall must no longer be given over to 
the Eadical party. It was time that a stand 
should be made, and a battle should be 
fought. Sir John Penlyon, said the news- 
papers, was the man to make that stand, 
and to fight that battle. He was rich, he 
had a stake in the country, he was influ- 
ential, he was fairly popular. He had sat 
in Parliament fourteen years before for a 
Cornish borough that was now among the 
things of the past, a sop long since flung 
by Conservative Eeformers to the Democrat- 
ic Cerberus. He could never again sit for 


30 


Blackmount, the hereditary seat of his an- 
cestors, with a constituency of three -and- 
twenty; but he could sit for North Corn- 
wall, and North Cornwall claimed him for 
its own. 

Perhaps Sir John Penlyon was getting 
tired of rusticity. In any case, he consent- 
ed to be nominated in the Conservative in- 
terest, and the result of the contest was a 
triumph for the good old family and the 
good old Cause. Sir John took a small house 
in Queen Anne’s Gate, gave himself up to 
politics, and almost deserted his Cornish do- 
main. Except for a month or six weeks in 
the late autumn, he was scarcely seen in the 
West during the seven years that followed 
his election as Member for the Western Di- 
vision of North Cornwall. He was re-elected 
during those seven years without opposition, 
for it was now felt that the Western Divis- 
ion had become a pocket - borough of the 
Penlyons, just as Blackmount had been. 
There was no use in fighting Sir John Pen- 
lyon in his stronghold of the West. 

Before settling himself in his comfortable 


31 


bachelor quarters by St. James’s Park, Sir 
John invited his only sister, Mrs. Hawberk, 
to Penlyon Place, with a view to taking 
counsel with her as to the education of his 
daughters. The time had doubtless come 
when Lilian and Sibyl must cease to run 
wild. Mrs. Hawberk’s husband was the 
younger son of a peer, and she gave herself 
some airs on the strength of that connection. 
She was very fond of talking of Allerton, 
the family seat, where she usually spent a 
somewhat dismal six weeks in September 
and October while her husband was going 
about the country speaking at political meet- 
ings, and wearing himself out, as he de- 
clared, in support of the Cause. 

Mrs. Hawberk came. She had not seen 
her nieces since their mother’s death. She 
took them in hand at once in a masterful 
way ; and after spending a single afternoon 
with them and their governess, she informed 
her brother that his children were monsters 
of ignorance. 

“The sooner you get rid of that young 
woman the better,” she said of poor Miss 


32 


Peterson, who had done all in her power to 
make herself agreeable to the great lady. 
“She has taught them nothing, and she has 
not the slightest authority over them.” 

“She has looked after their health,” re- 
plied Sir John, apologizing for the govern- 
ess’s shortcomings, “ and they are very fond 
of her.” 

“ One wouldn’t wish them to be fond of 
her. It is a very bad sign when children are 
fond of their governess. It means that she 
spoils them and allows them to be idle.” 

“ They have been idle at my desire. I 
told Miss Peterson to cultivate their bodies 
and leave their minds alone.” 

“ And she has obeyed you to the letter. I 
never met with such ignorant children. 
They pretend to be fond of flowers, yet they 
know no more of botany than my maid 
Rogers. They have made no progress with 
the piano. They know no French, they are 
backward in everything.” 

“ They are splendid children,” said Sir 
John, doggedly. 

“Ho doubt; and if you allow them to 


33 


grow up with Miss Peterson they will be 
splendid savages ; and you will be put to 
shame by them when they go into society. It 
does not do for girls to be ignorant and un- 
accomplished nowadays. You will want them 
to marry well, I suppose, by-and-by ?” 

“ I sha’n’t want them to marry badly.” 

“ Of course not ; and to make good matches 
they will have to be accomplished as well as 
good - looking. They are very sweet girls,” 
added Mrs. Hawberk, not wishing to offend 
her only brother, and a wealthy brother; 
“ but they have been dreadfully indulged.” 

“ I wanted them to be happy.” 

“ Ho doubt they have had a fine time of 
it. You were not so weak about them in 
their poor mother’s time.” 

“ Ho ! I wish I had been a little weaker.” 

“ How do you mean ?” 

“I think Mary would have liked me to 
take more notice of them.” 

“Honsense, John ; you were perfect in 
your conduct to poor Mary. Ho young 
woman could have had a more chivalrous 
husband. I hope you don’t reproach your- 

3 


34 


self for having been wanting in any respect 
towards poor Mary ?” 

“Well, we needn’t talk about that. No- 
body can mend the past. I want you to do 
what is best for the girls now I am to be so 
much in London. If Miss Peterson is not 
governess enough for them she must have a 
superior person to help her. She can stay to 
look after their health, and see that they 
change their shoes.” 

“My dear John, a maid will do all that. 
If you want me to be of use to them you 
must let me have a free hand.” 

“ Certainly ; you shall have a free hand for 
the next five years, till they have finished 
their education. Lilian is nearly thirteen. 
Five years hence she will be old enough to 
enter society.” 

“ And it shall be my care that she is fitted 
for her position as your elder daughter,” said 
Mrs. Hawberk, decisively. 


CHAPTER II 


Sir John went to London, and left Mrs. 
Hawberk mistress of the field. She began 
her work of reform by dismissing meek little 
Miss Peterson, who was so much afraid of 
her that she was almost glad to go ; yes, even 
to exchange the fleshpots of Penlyon Castle 
for the meagre fare of a lodging in Camden 
Town. Miss Peterson loved her pupils, and 
wept at parting from them ; but the scornful 
domination of the fashionable lady had cowed 
her spirits. She cried bitterly on the last 
morning at the castle, but found few words 
to express either her love or her sorrow. 

Sibyl, the impulsive one, clung round Miss 
Peterson’s neck, and abused her aunt for 
sending this faithful friend away. 

“ I shall hate the new governess, and I 
shall always love you,” she said. 

“ My dear, you mustn’t hate any one. We 
have been very happy together, and I hope 


36 


some day Sir John will let me see you and 
Lilian again.” 

“Let you see us!” exclaimed Sibyl. “I 
should think so, indeed. You shall come 
and live with me again the minute I am 
grown up. She will have no power over us 
then.” 

She was Mrs. Hawberk, who had not left 
her room at this early hour. The carriage 
was at the door to take Miss Peterson to the 
coach, and the coach was to take her to the 
station at Launceston, whence it would be a 
long, long journey to Camden Town. 

Lilian and Sibyl had packed a picnic-bas- 
ket for her with provisions that would have 
lasted for a week if the train had been 
snowed up on the moor. 

“I’ll go to Victoria with you!” cried Si- 
byl. 

Victoria was the point where the coach 
stopped to pick up passengers from Pen- 
lyon. 

“ No, no, my darling, your aunt wouldn’t 
like—” 

But Sibyl jumped into the carriage before 


37 


the sentence was finished. The footman 
shut the door, and the coachman drove off. 
There was no time to spare, if the coach was 
to swallow up poor little Miss Peterson that 
morning. 

The coach did swallow her ; and Sibyl, 
without either hat or jacket, alighted from 
the brougham half an hour afterwards to 
find her aunt standing in the porch awaiting 
her return. 

“ You are the most undisciplined child I 
ever had to do with,” said Mrs. Hawberk. 

The new governess arrived three days 
after Miss Peterson’s departure. She, too, 
was young in years, but she was old in 
culture and accomplishments. She was a 
model governess. She had taken prizes and 
certificates, and had passed examinations of 
all kinds. She was strong in mathematics 
and in natural science. She knew a respect- 
able amount of Latin, and had a useful 
smattering of Greek — enough to make her 
provokingly erudite about the derivation of 
words. Sibyl and Lilian began by hating 


38 


her, and though hatred soon simmered down 
to toleration, they never became fond of her. 
She had indifferent health, and suffered from 
neuralgic headaches; and indeed it seemed 
as if she introduced headaches into Penlyon 
Place, for her pupils very soon began to suffer 
from aching temples, and to look dark and 
heavy about the eyes, and to lose those fine 
appetites for indiscriminate food which they 
had enjoyed under the Peterson regime , in 
the old happy time when they used to go 
down to dessert every evening and sit on each 
side of their father, and eat as much fruit 
and cake, chow-chow, juava jelly, and pre- 
served pineapple as ever they liked, while 
Sir John nibbled an olive or two and sipped 
his claret. 

Neuralgia and headache reigned at Pen- 
lyon, and the two girls grew white and wan, 
like their all -accomplished governess, and 
Mr. Nicholls, the family doctor, had no long- 
er any reason to complain of the rude health 
of the Miss Penlyons. He had plenty of visits 
booked against Penlyon Place at the end of 
the year. 


39 


Just at the time when Lilian and Sibyl 
were growing fastest, running up from stout, 
chubby children into thin slips of girls, just 
when their constitutions most needed rest 
and liberty and pleasant exercise in the open 
air — riding, tennis, walking, rowing, romp- 
ing — this burden of education was laid upon 
them. They were reminded every day that 
they had been neglected ; and that they 
were to make amends for lost time by extra 
application. They were crammed with ’olo- 
gies from which not one young woman out 
of a hundred ever derives the faintest pleas- 
ure or advantage in after-life. They were 
made to sit at the piano, tap, tap, tapping 
the notes, first with one finger and then with 
another, in monotonous five-finger exercises 
— the athletics of piano practice, Miss Gam- 
bert called it. Even the music they played 
as a relief from the five-finger tapping was 
of a dry and learned order which aroused no 
interest in their minds — a “sad, mechanic 
exercise,” and no more. Their only pleasure 
at the piano was found in stolen minutes, 
when Miss Gambert was out of ear-shot, 


40 


when Sibyl, whose ear was of the quickest, 
picked out music-hall tunes, which she had 
heard gardeners or stable-boys whistling at 
their work. Music-hall ditties that catch the 
fancy of city and suburbs will travel even as 
far west as Tintagel. 

Mr. Nicholls remonstrated with the gov- 
erness upon the subject of overmuch study, 
and had even the audacity to argue the point 
with Mrs. Hawberk herself, on one of her 
half-yearly visits to Penlyon Place. 

That lady laughed his arguments to 
scorn. 

“¥e have got beyond that old-fashioned 
idea of brain-work being bad for the consti- 
tution, my good Mr. Nicholls. Look at judg- 
es, bishops, famous physicians, some of the 
longest-lived men on record. My nieces are 
like all girls of their age, fanciful and rather 
affected. Miss Gambert is giving them a 
sound and solid education, which will make 
them valuable members of society ; and here 
you come with your old-fashioned fads about 
overwork and mental strain.’’ 

“I can only tell you, madam, that these 


41 


dear young ladies have deteriorated in health 
since Miss Peterson left — ” 

“ Miss Peterson ! She was a favorite of 
yours, evidently, doctor, interrupted Mrs. 
Hawberk, with a sneer which brought an 
indignant blush to the cheeks and forehead 
of the bachelor doctor, who had never given 
Miss Peterson so much as a thought in the 
way of gallantry. “Come, Mr. Nicholls, in 
spite of your worship of ignorance, I think 
you will admit that any deterioration in my 
nieces is the effect of overgrowth, and that 
it is natural for girls of their age to be weak 
and weedy.” 

“ Yes, Mrs. Hawberk, and that weak and 
weedy age is just the period at which the 
educational strain should be relaxed. How- 
ever, I can but submit to your superior wis- 
dom, and hope that with the help of tonics 
and good living the young ladies may regain 
the ground lost in the last year or so.” 

“ Give them as many tonics as you like, 
only don’t interfere with the cultivation of 
their minds.” 

Mrs. Hawberk took her own way in this 


42 


as in every other matter in which she was 
given what she called a free hand. She had 
an invincible belief in her own wisdom, and 
in the foolishness of almost everybody else. 
She drove Miss Gambert, and Miss Gambert 
drove her pupils, and Lilian Penlyon at eigh- 
teen years of age was certainly a very well 
read and accomplished young woman, only it 
was a pity that she should be so weak and 
weedy and consumptive-looking. 

“Her poor mother’s constitution,” Mrs. 
Hawberk said, decisively, when Sir John la- 
mented his daughter’s delicate health. 

Lilian made her debut in society, chaper- 
oned by her aunt, from a fine house in the 
best part of Cromwell Load, while Sibyl 
stayed at Penlyon and went grinding on at 
the dry-as-dust books, and the learned Ger- 
man music, which the most advanced educa- 
tional authorities had prescribed for the cul- 
tivation of youthful minds. Lilian went 
everywhere, and was admired for her delicate 
beauty and the shy dignity of her manners, 
and her unlikeness to other girls. She had 
grown up in solitude, and the slang of other 


43 


girls was a language unknown to her, and 
the ways of other girls were foreign to her 
mind. She was very much admired for these 
superior qualities, and it was not forgotten 
that she was joint heiress of Sir John Pen- 
lyon, the wealthy Cornishman, whose mines 
and slate quarries were known to yield a 
large revenue, without counting his extensive 
landed estate, the greater part of which, un- 
happily, was included in the entail, and would 
go to the heir-at-law. Before Lilian had 
been out three months Mrs. Hawberk had 
the triumph of informing her brother that 
Lord Lurgrave, the Earl of Holmsley’s son, 
had proposed to his elder daughter, and only 
waited his permission to consider himself 
formally engaged to her. 

“Does Lilian like the young man?” Sir 
John asked, briefly. 

“ I believe it is quite a romantic attach- 
ment on both sides.” 

“Then let them marry,” said Sir John; 
“ the sooner the better.” 

He did everything in his power to facili- 
tate the marriage. The young man was a 


44 


good young man. Nobody had any charge 
to bring against him, and his father, Lord 
Holmsley, was well placed in the world, and 
stood well with the world. The alliance was 
altogether honorable, and Miss Penlyon was 
thought to have done well for herself in her 
first season. 

Sir John had his own reasons for hurrying 
on the marriage — reasons which he told to 
nobody. More than once during the years 
of his widowhood he had been on the point 
of taking a second wife, and at the eleventh 
hour, on the eve of proposing to a lady whom 
he thought inclined to favor his suit, he had 
drawn back. No, he had married once with- 
out love, and he had not made his wife hap- 
py. He would not enter upon a second love- 
less union in the hope of an heir to his estate. 
Long ago, in his early manhood, he had 
loved, and he had been balked in his love, 
which had been bestowed upon one who was 
his inferior in birth and social status. He 
had loved a farmer’s daughter, and had want- 
ed to make her his wife, setting all social 
distinctions at naught for her dear sake. But 


45 


he had gi ven her up at his father’s bidding, and 
at her own entreaty. She loved him too well 
to make bad blood between father and son. 

All this had happened thirty years ago, 
but it had influenced the whole of Sir John 
Penlyon’s after-life. He made up his mind 
that there should be no second loveless union 
for him, and he looked forward to seeing his 
grandchildren grow up about him. He could 
not give Penlyon Place or the lands of Pen- 
lyon to his daughter’s son; those must go 
to the heir-at-law. But he might bequeath 
the accumulations of long years, and the 
quarries and mines which he himself had 
bought. He had never spent more than a 
third of his income. 

When he went down to the West in Octo- 
ber he found Mrs. Hawberk established there 
before him, superintending all the domestic 
arrangements for the marriage. The wed- 
ding clothes were being made in London. 
All that Sir John had to do was to agree 
with Lord Holmsley’s lawyers about the set- 
tlement. The wedding was fixed for the 
15th of November. The settlement was lib- 


46 


eral ; but if Sir John Penlyon’s daughter were 
to die childless, her fortune would revert 
to her father, and young Lord Lurgrave 
would have nothing. This point was insist- 
ed upon by Sir John’s lawyer. 

“ Happily the young lady’s death is a re- 
mote contingency,” said Lord Holmsley when 
his own lawyer objected to the clause. 

Sir John found the lovers very happy, and 
Penlyon Place in a pleasant bustle of expec- 
tation. He found Sibyl still grinding on at 
science and history, and more ’ologies than 
he himself had ever heard of, a university 
education in his day not having recognized 
the ’ologies. He found her pale and thin, 
and disguised in smoke -colored spectacles, 
which she had taken to wearing because the 
light hurt her eyes. 

“ My poor, pretty Sibyl, how they have 
changed you!” exclaimed Sir John. 

His younger daughter, once so daring in 
her merriment, so frankly demonstrative in 
her affection, was now shy and restrained in 
her manner to her father. He had seen a 
good deal of Lilian in the London season, and 


47 


the ice had been broken between them. Lil- 
ian was almost the Lilian of old. But Sibyl 
was completely changed, and though Mrs. 
Hawberk assured him that the change was 
an improvement, he could not help regret- 
ting the old Sibyl, the frank and fearless 
companion, the spirited young horsewoman, 
the sunburnt, bronze- haired girl who could 
handle oar or boat-hook with the best of the 
lads of Boscastle. He saw her at her studies 
in the library every morning; he heard her 
play erudite German music after dinner in 
the drawing-room. He saw her and Miss 
Gambert setting out every afternoon for their 
constitutional walk on the moors, and riding 
home in the dusk one evening he saw them 
pacing the wind-blown road, with Mr. Mor- 
land, the High-Church curate, in attendance. 
He questioned Sibyl about the curate when 
she had played her newest mazurka and was 
bidding him good-night. 

“ Is there anything between Miss Gambert 
and Morland?” he asked. “Is he paying his 
addresses to her V 

“ Ho, father; I think not.” 


4S 


“ Humph ! I began to suspect something 
when I saw him walking with you two this 
afternoon. He is a very good fellow, though 
his father is only a grocer in a small way of 
business in Plymouth. She might do worse.” 

“ Yes, he is very good.” 

That was all. Sibyl touched her father’s 
cheek with a faint, fluttering kiss and retired, 
leaving the room in the quiet manner which 
Miss Gambert had impressed upon her as the 
proper manner for a young lady belonging 
to one of the county families. 

Miss Penlyon’s wedding was a very smart 
wedding, or as smart as a wedding can be in 
the wilds of Cornwall. She had a bishop to 
marry her, assisted by a High-Church arch- 
deacon, and by Mr. Morland, curate of the 
parish — Mr. Morland, who was a pale, thin 
young man with large blue eyes and a short, 
nervous cough, and who was nearer Rome 
in all his thoughts and aspirations than the 
archdeacon. 

Lilian Penlyon was as graceful and digni- 
fied a bride as any one could desire to see, 


49 


and Mrs. Hawberk prided herself upon the 
result 6f her wise administration. 

“ I hope you are satisfied with your daugh- 
ters to-day, John,” she said, swelling with 
conscious merit, her matronly form seeming 
larger than usual in the amplitude of a brand- 
new brocade gown. 

“They are looking very handsome, but I 
wish they did not look so fragile,” replied 
Sir John, gravely. 

“Blood, my dear John, blood. You 
wouldn’t expect a racer to show the bulk and 
bone of a cart-horse.” 

When the wedding was over, and Lilian 
and her husband were travelling in Italy on 
a wedding-tour which was to last till the 
spring, life at Penlyon Castle dropped back 
into the old grooves ; and the old grooves 
meant books and piano and drawing-board, 
varied only by the dull constitutional walk 
or the duller drive. The winter skies in that 
western land were clear and bright, and a 
few stray flowers lingered here and there in 
the shelter of the hills, as if winter had for- 
gotten them; but the landscape in all its 

4 


50 


poetic beauty was a melancholy landscape 
for the afternoon eyes of a girl whose long, 
laborious mornings were given to dry books 
and dryer music, and to convincing herself 
with strenuous toil that she had no talent 
for painting. 

The daily walk was insisted upon by doc- 
tor and governess; so Miss Penlyon was 
marched out in fair weather or foul, and 
had to tramp submissively for at least four 
miles, sometimes buffeted by the wind and 
the spray, sometimes moving ghost-like in a 
gray mist of rain. 

Mr. Morland, the curate, often joined gov- 
erness and pupil in these afternoon walks. 
He had nothing to say about the world of 
men, but he had lived and had his being from 
boyhood upward in a little world of books, 
and about these he was eloquent. Carlyle, 
Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Shelley, 
Keats — these were his gods, and he would 
quote them and talk of them for an hour at 
a stretch. 

To Sibyl, who had been reared upon hard 
facts strictly on the Gradgrind principle, the 


51 


world of philosophy and poetry was a reve- 
lation. She explored her father’s library, 
and in a corner among the very refuse of the 
shelves found a shabby old volume of Shel- 
ley, printed in Paris ; and this treasure she 
carried off to her bedroom, and kept under 
her pillow and pored over in secret, marking 
his favorite passages and learning them by 
rote, so that one day, half unconsciously, she 
took up the line where Mr. Morland stopped, 
and went on to the end of the stanza. 

“I hope you found those lines in a book 
of selections,” said Miss Gambert ; “ I am 
sure your aunt would disapprove of Shelley.” 

“ She may disapprove, but I’m sure she 
never read him,” answered Sibyl. “Lilian 
told me that she never reads anything but 
the tradesmen’s books, and that she pores 
over them every Tuesday morning in a mad- 
dening manner, and then has awful talks 
with her house-keeper.” 

“ Mrs. Hawberk is a very clever woman, 
and an admirable manager.” 

“I dare say she is; but she need not pa- 
rade her butcher’s book. She has a pile of 


62 


horrid tradesmen’s books on the breakfast- 
table, and looks over them as she eats her 
breakfast. I call it absolutely indecent. 
Lilian said it made her hate Tuesday morn- 
ings. She used to wonder if aunt thought 
she made too much difference in the weekly 
bills.” 

“ Mrs. Hawberk has ample means, and 
keeps a liberal table ; but she abhors waste, 
as all sensible women do,” said the governess, 
reprovingly. 

“ If she parades her butcher’s book when 
I am in the Cromwell Road I shall say some- 
thing rude to her,” retorted Sibyl ; “ but I 
hope Lilian will be in town in the spring, 
and then she will be able to chaperon me.” 

“You are looking forward eagerly to the 
spring, when you will have left Cornwall,” 
said Mr. Morland, pensively ; and then there 
came a silence upon Sibyl and the curate, 
and Miss Gambert did all the talking during 
the homeward walk. 

Sir John Penlyon went back to London 
soon after Christmas, and politics claimed 
him for their own. He had arranged with his 


63 


sister that Sibyl was to make her debut from 
the Cromwell Road as Lilian had done. Lady 
Lurgrave, even if she were to have a house 
in town, which was doubtful, would be too 
young and inexperienced a matron to take 
charge of a younger sister. She would not 
have the firmness of will needed to keep 
younger sons at bay ; she would be too good- 
natured and easy in her treatment of detri- 
mentals • altogether, Sir John felt that his 
sister would be the only competent chaperon 
for Sibyl, whom he always thought of as wild 
and difficult to manage, remembering how 
rash and wilful she had been in those child- 
ish years, when she rode the piebald pony, 
and insisted upon going faster at ditches and 
hedges than her father thought safe for so 
juvenile a performer. She had been head- 
strong and disobedient in those days, but he 
had loved her for her high spirits and daring. 
Nowon the threshold of womanhood she was 
obedient enough to please the most exacting 
parent. Mrs. Hawberk and Miss Gambert 
between them had succeeded in taming her ; 
but perhaps Sir John hardly liked this 


54 


younger daughter of his quite so well after 
that careful training as he had liked her in 
her childhood, when she had been as wild 
and sweet as a dog-rose and as full of thorns. 
Mrs. Hawberk, however, took credit to her- 
self for having produced the most perfect 
thing in young ladies, and Sir John felt that 
he ought to be grateful. 

He really did feel grateful to this clever 
sister of his for having taken all his paternal 
responsibilities off his shoulders and left him 
free to attend to the affairs of the nation — 
very grateful, until one foggy afternoon in 
February, when a telegram was brought to 
him in the library at the Carlton, where he 
was writing his letters. 

“To Sir John Penlyon, — Sibyl left the 
castle at seven this morning. She has been 
traced as far as Bodmin Road Station ; sup- 
posed to have gone to Bristol. I am in the 
greatest distress of mind. Pray tell me what 
I am to do. Gambert.” 


“ What does the woman mean V* Sir John 


55 


asked himself, staring at the words in the 
telegram. “ Sibyl must have quarrelled with 
her, and is on her way to London, meaning 
no doubt to come to her aunt or to me. 
Bristol is all nonsense — a mistake of the por- 
ters or of the servant who followed her to 
Bodmin. A foolish, troublesome business; 
just now, too, with this amendment coming 
on to-night, and when I am so full of work.” 

He looked at his watch. Half-past two. 
The train from Bodmin would arrive at Pad- 
dington soon after four ; he must be on the 
platform, of course, to receive this foolish 
daughter. It was very wrong of her — a vein 
of the old Adam cropping up in the regen- 
erate Sibyl. Who would have thought her 
capable of such rebellion? 

“ She seemed so tame and well broken when 
I was at Penlyon,” mused Sir John ; “ but no 
doubt that middle-aged young lady with the 
spectacles and the scraggy shoulders is rather 
a trying person to live with in a country- 
house through a long winter.” 

He went on writing his letters till there 
was only just time to get to Paddington, al- 


56 


lowing a widish margin for the fog — before 
the first train from the far west came in. If 
the train also had not been delayed by the 
fog, Sir John would not have been there to 
see its arrival. 

He was there, walking up and down the 
platform, watchful and on the alert, until 
the last cab had driven away with the ]ast 
passenger and the last portmanteau; but 
among all those passengers there was no 
daughter of his. 

“ I am a fool,” he said to himself ; “ she 
may have got out at Westbourne Park.” 

He took another cab, and had himself 
driven slowly through the thickening fog 
across the park to South Kensington and 
the fine large house in the Cromwell Road, 
from which Sibyl was to take a header into 
London society. 

Mrs. Haw berk was sitting alone in the 
subdued lamplight of the back drawing- 
room, the spacious front drawing-room light- 
ed only by a low fire and full of gloomy 
shadows. 

She started from her chair as Sir John 


57 


was announced, and ran to him and fell upon 
his neck, sobbing : 

“ Oh, my dear, dear John, I am so sorry 
for you !” she exclaimed, gaspingly. 

“What do you mean, Clara? What has 
happened? Has Sibyl come to you?” 

“ Come to me, poor, blind, deluded girl ! 
Come to me ? Oh, John, haven’t you heard? 
Didn't you receive poor Miss Gambert’s sec- 
ond telegram ?” 

“Ho!” cried Sir John, fiercely. “What 
does it all mean? Has there been an acci- 
dent on the line ? Is the girl hurt — killed ?” 
he asked, hoarse with sudden terror. 

His sister’s tears, her agitation, her em- 
braces were enough to suggest direst calam- 
ity. 

“ Killed !” cried Mrs. Hawberk. “ Ho, she 
is safe enough. There are some parents, 
perhaps, who would rather hear that she had 
been killed in a railway accident than that 
she had lowered herself, thrown herself away 
so blindly as she has done !” 

“ Clara, if you would be good enough to 
tell me in plain words what has happened to 


58 


my daughter, instead of trying to act like 
Madame Ristori in ‘Medea,’ you would do me 
a favor,” said Sir John, in his most unpleas- 
ant voice. 

Mrs. Hawberk sat down and collected 
herself, thinking, as she did so, that it was 
in the fraternal nature to be disagreeable at 
every stage of life. She remembered dimly 
how shamefully her brother had ill-treated 
her favorite doll five-and-thirty years before. 
He was the same man now — now, after she 
had toiled and slaved for him, saving him all 
thought and care about his motherless girls. 
The same man, utterly heartless and unfeel- 
ing. 

“Your daughter Sibyl was married to Mr. 
Morland, the curate, at St. Sophia’s Church, 
Plymouth, this morning,” she said, with 
haughty indifference. “If you haven’t re- 
ceived your own telegram, you may like to 
see mine.” 

She waved her hand towards an occasional 
table, on which lay an open telegram. Sir 
John snatched it up and read it eagerly, 
stooping to get the light of the shaded lamp, 


59 


which was intended to make darkness visible 
rather than to illuminate the room : 

“ The inquiries about Bristol were only a 
blind. She went to Plymouth with Mr. Mor- 
land, and they were married at St. Sophia’s, 
and have gone to Torquay for their honey- 
moon. A telegram from him to me — letter 
to follow. Also letter to Sir John. I think 
you must feel for me, dear friend, for you 
alone can understand my feelings under this 
cruel blow.” 

It was a long telegram. A woman must 
be deeply moved before she can be so reck- 
less in the expenditure of words, every one 
of which has to be paid for. 

“ Her feelings !” growled Sir John. “ What 
have her feelings to do with my daughter’s 
misconduct, except so far as she has proved 
herself unworthy of being trusted with the 
care of a pupil ?” 

“ Oh, John ! don’t you know the poor thing 
was engaged to Morland ? He pretended to 
be only waiting for his first living in order to 
marry her.” 

“ Oh, that was the state of the case, was 


60 


it?” said Sir John, with cutting coolness. 
“ And he thought it a better speculation to 
marry my daughter. I am very sorry for 
him. He will find he has made a bad bar- 
gain. He would have done better to marry 
the governess, for she is a bread-winner, and 
my daughter will never bring him a six- 
pence.” 

“Oh, John! She has been very foolish, 
poor child, but I know you will forgive her 
— after a time.” 

“Not after an eternity — if eternity could 
have an afterwards. She has set me at 
naught, and from this hour to my last hour 
on earth I shall set her at naught. It shall 
be to me as if she had never existed.” 


CHAPTER III 


The time, afternoon — the afternoon of 
Christmas Eve; the place, the library at 
Penlyon Castle ; and the only personage Sir 
John Penlyon, sitting by the fire in the 
gathering dusk, somewhat out of temper 
with the world at large, and with himself 
as the most important member in it. The 
morning had been troublesome, spent for the 
most part with his bailiff, who was full of 
the wants and the shortcomings of tenants. 
Sir John had missed his useful friend Danby 
and that philosophical spirit which always 
made light of such thorns in the flower-bed 
of a rich man’s lot, and always succeeded in 
laughing him out of his bad temper. 

Mr. Danby had been absent for the last 
four days. 

He had gone, with Sir John’s check in his 
pocket, to fetch the Christmas hirelings, the 
little people who were to come to the dull 


62 


old castle and make merriment for its soli- 
tary lord. 

The more Sir John Penlyon meditated 
upon the business, especially this afternoon, 
the more preposterous and vexatious it seem- 
ed to him. 

“ I must have been an arrant fool to con- 
sent to such a piece of folly,” he said to him- 
self. 

( Enter Adela Hawberk ^ flushed and excited .) 

Adela. We have finished, uncle (clapping 
her hands). It is quite the prettiest tree you 
ever saw. How delighted the dear little 
things will be ! 

Sir John (testily). Dear little things, in- 
deed ! How do you know they mayn’t be 
odious little things, spoilt and cantankerous, 
or underbred and hypocritical, if they have 
been what a middle-class mother calls well 
brought up — brought up to sit upon the edge 
of their chair, and to be afraid of everybody ? 

Adela ( with conviction). They are sure to 
be nice children. Mr. Danby wouldn’t bring 
nasty ones. 


Sir John. What does he know about chil- 
dren — an old bachelor ? 

Adela. Why, uncle, you can’t have seen 
him in a children’s party, or you’d never say 
that. He is a prodigious favorite with the 
children in all the houses he goes to. Perhaps 
that is one reason why the mothers are so 
fond of him. Hark ! They ought to be here 
by this time. The carriage went to Victoria 
an hour ago to meet the coach from Launces- 
ton. They were to stay at Plymouth last 
night. Mr. Danby thought it would be too 
long a journey for the little things to do in 
one day. He is so considerate. 

Sir John. He is a fool, and I am a greater 
fool to encourage his nonsense. The utter 
absurdity of bringing children from the other 
end of the world ! Do you know where the 
creatures come from, Adela ? 

Adela. I haven’t the faintest notion. All 
Mr. Danby said was that they lived on. the 
other side of London, and that he wanted a 
clear week to fetch them. You must remem- 
ber, uncle, you told him you wanted to know 
nothing about them. They were to come and 


04 


go, and you were to hear no more of them. 
They were to have no claim upon you in the 
future. 

Sir John. I should think not, indeed. 
Claim upon me, forsooth ! But it would have 
been only civil to tell me where the brats 
come from, and who their people are. 

Adel a. No doubt he will tell you, if you 
ask him. 

Sir John. He ought to have told me of 
his own accord. I am not going to ask him. 

Adela was discreetly silent, seeing that her 
uncle was in what she called one of his tem- 
pers. She always respected her uncle’s tem- 
pers. 

She went to the big bay-window, from 
which she could see a long way down the 
drive. It was not five o’clock, but the dim- 
ness of a wintry twilight was creeping over 
the landscape. The afternoon was mild and 
calm, by no means an old-fashioned Christ- 
mas, an afternoon that might have been Oc- 
tober. She could hear a faint sighing of the 
wind in the trees near at hand, and the roar- 
ing of the waves far off — not a stormy roar, 


65 


only the rhythmical rise and swell of the 
great Atlantic rolling over the stony beach. 

Everything had been made ready for the 
little strangers. There were fires blazing in 
two large bedrooms overhead — rooms with a 
door of communication. In one there were 
still the two little white beds in which Lilian 
and Sibyl had slept when they were children ; 
poor Lilian, whose bed was in the English 
cemetery at Florence, under a white marble 
monument erected by her sorrowing husband, 
and whose sorrowing husband had taken to 
himself a second wife five years ago. Every 
one knew where Lilian was lying, but no one 
at Penlyon Castle knew where Sibyl’s head 
had found rest. All that people knew about 
the disobedient daughter was that her hus- 
band had died within three or four years of 
her marriage, worn to death in some foreign 
mission. Of his luckless widow no one at 
Penlyon had heard anything, but it was sur- 
mised that her father made her an allowance. 
He could hardly let his only daughter starve, 
people said, however badly she might have 
treated him. Lady Lurgrave’s early death 

5 


had been a crushing blow to his love and to 
his pride. She had died childless. 

The rooms were ready. Adela ran up- 
stairs to take a final survey. One of the 
house-maids had been told off to wait upon 
the little strangers, and Adela’s maid was to 
give a hand. Neither of these young women 
had any objection to the extra duty. Each 
professed herself fond of children. 

“ They’ll enliven the place a little, poor 
mites,” said Harrop, who considered Pen- 
lyon the abode of dulness, and Sarah the 
house-maid agreed with her. 

Harrop was to sleep in the larger room, 
and in the bed which Miss Peterson had oc- 
cupied during five peaceful years. Sarah 
had put up her truckle-bed in the inner and 
smaller room, where she was to keep guard 
over the little boy. 

“ It would be downright cruelty to let any 
child sleep alone in one of these gashly 
rooms,” said Sarah, the “ gashliness ” being 
doubtless a question of spaciousness and oak 
pannelling, and ponderous old-fashioned fur- 


67 


niture which cast monstrous shadows in the 
pale glimmer of the night-light. 

Hark ! Yes, that was the roll of wheels 
on the gravel drive, a nearer sound than the 
sullen swell of the sea out yonder grinding 
the pebbles in an everlasting mill. 

Adela Hawberk flew down to the hall, fol- 
lowed by Harrop, while Sarah the house-maid 
stopped upstairs and gave a final stir to the 
fires after the wont of her tribe, who are al- 
ways ready to use the poker, wanted or not 
wanted, with a noble disregard to the coal- 
merchant’s bill. 

Sir John had heard the carriage stop and 
the opening of the hall door, and although he 
pretended to go on reading his paper by the 
lamp placed close at his elbow, the pretence 
was a poor one, and anybody might have 
seen that he was listening with all his might. 

The footman had opened the hall door as 
the wheels drew near ; it was wide open when 
the carriage stopped. The red light from the 
hall fire streamed out upon the evening gray, 
and three little silvery voices were heard ex- 
claiming : 


68 


“ Oh, what a pretty house !” 

“ Oh, what a big house !” 

And then the smallest voice of the three 
with amazing distinctness : 

“ What an exceedingly red fire.” 

The carriage door flew open, and two little 
girls, all in red from top to toe, and one little 
boy in gray rolled out in a heap, or seemed 
to roll out, like puppies out of a basket, and 
scrambled onto their feet, and ran up the 
steps, Mr. Danby, slim and jaunty as usual, 
following them. 

“ Good gracious, how tiny they are !” cried 
Adela, stooping down to kiss the smaller girl, 
a round red bundle, with a round little face, 
and large dark gray eyes shining in the fire- 
light. 

The tiny thing accepted the kiss somewhat 
shrinkingly, and looked about her, awed by 
the grandeur of the hall, the large fireplace, 
and blazing logs, the men in armor, or the 
suits of armor standing up and pretending to 
be men. 

“ I don’t like them,” said the tiny girl, 
clinging to Danby, and pointing at one of 


these mailed warriors with a muffled red 
hand; “ they’re not alive, are they, Uncle 
Tom?” 

“ Uo, no, no, Moppet, they’re as dead as 
door-nails.” 

“ Are they? I don’t like dead people.” 

“ Come, come, Moppet, suppose they’re not 
people at all — no more than a rocking-horse 
is a real live horse. We’ll pull one of them 
down to-morrow and look inside him, and 
then you’ll be satisfied.” 

The larger scarlet mite, larger by about an 
inch, older by a year, was standing before 
the fire, gravely warming her hands, spread- 
ing them out before the blaze as much as 
hands so tiny could spread themselves. The 
boy was skipping about the hall, looking at 
everything, the armed warriors especially, 
and not at all afraid. 

“ They’re soldiers, aren’t they ?” he asked. 

“ Yes, Laddie.” 

“ I should like to be dressed like that, and 
go into a battle and kill lots of people. I 
couldn’t be killed myself, could I, if I had 
that stuff all over me ?” 


70 


“Perhaps not, Laddie; but I don’t think it 
would answer. You’d be an anachronism.” 

“ I wouldn’t mind being a nackerism if it 
saved me from being killed,” said Laddie. 

“ Come, little ones, come and be presented 
to your host,” said Mr. Danby, as the foot- 
man opened the library door ; and they all 
poured in — Danby, Adela, and the children — 
the smallest running in first, her sister and 
the boy following, considerably in advance of 
the grown-ups. 

Moppet ran right into the middle of the 
room as fast as her little red legs could carry 
her; then seeing Sir John sitting where the 
bright lamplight shone full upon his pale el- 
derly face, with its strongly-marked features, 
black eyebrows, and silvery -gray hair, she 
stopped suddenly as if she had beheld a Gor- 
gon, and began to back slowly till she brought 
herself up against the silken skirt of Adela 
Hawberk’s gown, and in that soft drapery 
she in a manner absorbed herself, till there 
was nothing to be seen of the little neatly 
rounded figure except the tip of a bright red 
cap and the toes of two bright red gaiters. 


71 


The elder mite had advanced less boldly, 
and had not to beat so ignominious a retreat. 
She was near enough to Mr. Danby to clutch 
his hand, and holding by that she was hardly 
at all frightened. 

The boy, older, bolder, and less sensitive 
than either of the girls, went skipping round 
the library as he had skipped about the hall, 
looking at things and apparently unconscious 
of Sir John Peny Ion’s existence. 

“ How d’ye do, Danby?” said Sir John, 
holding out his hand as his old friend ad- 
vanced to the fire, the little red girl hanging 
onto his left hand, while he gave his right 
to his host. “Upon my word, I began to 
think you were never coming back. You’ve 
been an unconscionable time. One would 
suppose you had to fetch the children from 
the world’s end.” 

“ I had to bring them to the world’s end, 
you might say. Boscastle is something more 
than a day’s journey from London in the 
depth of winter.” 

“And are these the children? Good 
heavens, Danby ! what could you be think- 


72 


ing about to bring us such morsels of hu- 
manity ?” 

“¥e wanted children,” said Danby, “ not 
hobbledehoys.” 

“ Hobbledehoys ! no, but there is reason in 
everything. You couldn’t suppose I wanted 
infants like these — look at that little scrap 
hidden in Adela’s frock. It’s positively 
dreadful to contemplate ! They will be get- 
ing under my feet. I shall be treading upon 
them, and hurting them seriously.” 

“N o you won’t, Jack; I’ll answer for 
that.” 

“ Why not, pray ?” 

“ Because of their individuality. They are 
small, but they are people. When Moppet 
comes into a room everybody knows she is 
there. She is a little scared now ; but she 
will be as bold as brass in a quarter of an 
hour.” 

Sir John Penlyon put on his spectacles 
and looked at the little hirelings more criti- 
cally. Their youth and diminutive size had 
been a shock to him. He had expected 
bouncing children, with rosy faces, long au- 


73 


burn hair, and a good deal of well-developed 
leg showing below a short frock. These, 
measured against his expectations, were pos- 
itively microscopic. 

Their cheeks were pale rather than rosy. 
Their hair was neither auburn nor long. It 
was dark hair, and it was cropped close to 
the neat little heads, showing every bump 
in the broad, clever-looking foreheads. Sir 
John’s disapproving eyes showed him that 
the children were more intelligent than the 
common run of children ; but for the moment 
he was not disposed to accept intelligence in- 
stead of size. 

u They are preposterously small,” he said 
— “ not at all the kind of thing I expected. 
They will get lost under chairs or buried 
alive in waste -paper baskets. I wash my 
hands of them. Take them away, Adela. 
Let them be fed and put to bed.” Then turn- 
ing to Mr. Dan by as if to dismiss the subject, 
“Anything stirring in London when you 
were there, Tom ?” 

Before Danby could answer, Moppet 
emerged from her shelter, advanced delib- 


74 


erately, and planted herself in front of Sir 
John Penlyon, looking him straight in the 
face. 

“ I’m sorry you don t like us, Mr. Old Gen- 
tleman,” she said. 

Every syllable came with clear precision 
from those infantine lips. Moppet’s strong 
point was her power of speech. Firm, deci- 
sive, correct as to intonation came every sen- 
tence from the lips of this small personage. 
Ponderous polysyllables were no trouble to 
Moppet. There was only an occasional com 
sonant that baffled her. 

“ Who says I don’t like you?” said Sir John, 
taken aback, and lifting the animated bundle 
of red cloth onto his knee. 

He found there was something very sub- 
stantial inside the woolly cloak and gaiters, a 
pair of round plump arms and sturdy little 
legs, a compact little figure, which perched 
firmly on his knee. 

“ You said so,” retorted Moppet, with her 
large gray eyes very wide open, and looking 
full into his. “ You don’t like us because we 
are so very small. Everybody says we are 


75 


small, but everybody doesn’t mind. Why do 
you mind ?” 

“ I didn’t say anything about not liking 
you, little one. I was only afraid you were 
too small to go out visiting.” 

“ I went out to tea when I was two, and 
nobody said I was too small. I have real 
tea at parties, not milk-and-water. And I 
have been out to tea often and often — haven’t 
I, Lassie?” 

“ ISTot so many times as I have,” replied 
the elder red thing, with dignity. 

She was standing in front of the wide old 
fireplace, warming her hands, and she was to 
Sir John’s eye somewhat suggestive of a 
robin - redbreast that had fluttered in and 
lighted there. 

“ Of course not, because you’re older,” said 
Moppet, disgusted at this superfluous self- 
assertion on her sister’s part. “ I am always 
good at parties — ain’t I, Uncle Tom ?” turn- 
ing an appealing face to Mr. Danby. 

<‘So these Lilliputians are your nieces, 
Danby !” exclaimed Sir John. 

“Well, no, they are not exactly nieces, 


16 


though they are very near and dear. I am 
only a jury uncle.” 

“A jury uncle!” cried Moppet, thro wing her 
head back and laughing at the unknown word. 

a A jury uncle!” echoed the other two, and 
the three laughed prodigiously ; not because 
they attached any meaning to the word, but 
only because they didn’t know what it meant. 
That was where the joke lay. 

“ You know that in Cornwall and in Sicily 
all the elderly men are uncles, and all the 
old women aunts — everybody’s uncles and 
aunts,” concluded Mr. Danby. 

Moppet still occupied Sir J ohn’s knee. She 
felt somehow that it was a post of honor, and 
she had no inclination to surrender it. Her 
tiny fingers had possessed themselves of his 
watch-chain. 

“ Please show me your watch,” she said. 

Sir John drew out a big hunter. 

Moppet approached her little rosy mouth 
to the hinge and blew violently. 

“ Why don’t it open like Uncle Tom’s 
watch does when I blow ?” she asked. “ Is 
it broken ?” 


11 


“ Blow again, and we’ll see about that,” 
said Sir John, understanding the manoeuvre. 

The big bright case flew open as Moppet 
blew. 

“ Take care it doesn’t bite your nose off.” 

“ How big and bright it is — much bigger 
and brighter than TJncle Tom’s.” 

“ Uncle Tom’s is a lady’s watch, and Uncle 
Tom’s a lady’s man,” said Sir John, and the 
triple peal of childish laughter which greeted 
this remark made him fancy himself a wit. 

Small as they were, these children were 
easily amused, and that was a point in their 
favor, he thought. 

“ Tea is ready in the breakfast-room,” said 
Adela. 

“Tea in the breakfast - room. Oh, how 
funny !” And again they all laughed. 

At any rate, they were not doleful chil- 
dren — no long faces, no homesick airs, no 
bilious headaches — so far. 

“ I dare say they will all start measles or 
whooping-cough before we have done with 
them,” thought Sir J ohn, determined not to 
be hopeful. 


“ Oh, we are to come to tea, are we ?” he 
said, cheerily, and he actually carried Mop- 
pet all the way to the breakfast-room, almost 
at the other end of the rambling old house, 
and planted her in a chair by his side at 
the tea-table. She nestled up close beside 
him. 

“ You like us now, don’t you ?” she asked. 

“ I like you.” 

“ And you’ll like her,” pointing to her sis- 
ter with a small distinct finger, “ and him,” 
pointing to her brother, “ to-morrow morn- 
ing. You’ll know us all to-morrow morn- 
ing.” 

“ To-morrow will be Christmas,” said Lad- 
die, as if giving a piece of useful information 
to the company in general. 

“ Christmas !” cried Danby ; “ so it will. 
I mustn’t forget to hang up my stocking.” 

This provoked a burst of mirth. Uncle 
Tom’s stocking ! Uncle Tom hoping to get 
anything from Santa Claus ! 

“ You needn’t laugh,” said Mr. Danby, 
seriously. “ I mean to hang up one of my 
big Inverness stockings. It will hold a lot.” 


“ What do you expect to get ?” asked Lad- 
die, intensely amused. “ Toys ?” 

“ USTo ; chocolates, butter-scotch, hardbake, 
alecompane.” 

“ Oh, what’s alecompane ?” 

The name of this old-fashioned sweetmeat 
was received with derision. 

“ Why, what an old sweet-tooth you must 
be !” exclaimed Moppet ; “ but I don’t be- 
lieve you a bit. I shall come in the middle 
of the night to see if your stocking is there.” 

“ You won’t find my room. You’ll go into 
the wrong room most likely, and find one of 
the three bears.” 

Moppet laughed at the notion of those fa- 
miliar beasts. 

“There never were three bears that lived 
in a house, and had beds and chairs and 
knives and forks and things,” she said. “ I 
used to believe it once when I was very lit- 
tle ” — she said “ veway little ” — “ but now I 
know it isn’t true.” 

She looked round the table with a solemn 
air, with her lips pursed up, challenging con- 
tradiction. Her quaint little face, in which 


80 


the forehead somewhat overbalanced the tiny 
features below it, was all aglow with mind. 
One could not imagine more mind in any 
living creature than was compressed within 
this quaint scrap of humanity. 

Sir John watched her curiously. He had 
no experience of children of that early age. 
His own daughters had been some years 
older before he began to notice them. He 
could but wonder at this quick and eager 
brain animating so infinitesimal a body. 

Moppet looked round the table ; and what 
a table it was ! She had never seen anything 
like it. Cornwall, like Scotland, has a pro- 
digious reputation for breakfasts ; but Corn- 
wall, on occasion, can almost rival Yorkshire 
in the matter of tea. Laddie and Lassie had 
set to work already, one on each side of Miss 
Hawberk, who was engaged with urn and 
teapot. Moppet was less intent upon food, 
and had more time to wonder and scrutinize. 
Her big mind was hungrier than her little 
body. 

“ Oh, what a lot of candles !” she cried. 
“You must be very rich, Mr. Old Gentleman.” 






























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81 


Eight tall candles in two heavy old silver 
candelabra lighted the large round table, and 
on the dazzling white cloth was spread such 
a feast as little children love : cakes of many 
kinds, jams, and marmalade, buns, muffins, 
and crisp biscuits fresh from the oven, scones 
both white and brown, and the rich golden- 
yellow clotted cream, in the preparation of 
which Cornwall pretends to surpass her sister 
Devon, as in her cider and pery and smoked 
pig. It is only natural that Cornwall, in her 
stately seclusion at the end of Western Eng- 
land, should look down upon Devonshire as 
sophisticated and almost cockney. Cornwall 
is to Devon as the real Scottish Highlands 
are to the Trossachs. Besides the cakes and 
jams and cream-bowl there were flowers: 
Christmas roses, and real roses, yellow and 
red — such flowers as only grow in rich men’s 
greenhouses ; and there was a big silver urn 
in which Laddie and Lassie could see their 
faces, red and broad and shining, as they 
squeezed themselves each against one of 
Adela’s elbows. 

“ Oh, Uncle Tom,” suddenly exclaimed Las- 
6 


82 


sie, in a rapturous voice, “ we shall never die 
here !” 

“ Not for want of food, certainly, Lassie.” 

The children had eaten nothing since a 
very early dinner in Plymouth, and on being 
pressed to eat by Miss Hawberk and Mr. 
Danby, showed themselves frankly greedy. 
Sir John did nothing but look on and won- 
der at them. They showed him a new phase 
of humanity. Did life begin so soon? Was 
the mind so fully awakened while the body 
was still so tiny ? “ How old are you, Mis- 

tress Moppet ?” he asked, when Moppet had 
finished her first slice of saffron-cake. 

“ Four and a quarter.” 

Not five years old. She had lived in the 
world less than five years. She talked of 
what she had thought and believed when she 
was little, and she seemed to know as much 
about life as he did at sixty-five. 

“You are a wonderful little woman, not 
to be afraid of going out visiting without 
your nurse.” 

“ Nurse !” echoed Moppet, staring at him 
with her big gray eyes. “ What’s a nurse ?” 


83 


“ She doesn’t know,” explained Laddie ; 
“ we never had a nurse. It’s a woman like 
Julie has to take care of her, Moppet,” he 
explained, condescendingly, “a bonne we call 
her. But we’ve never had a bonne” he added, 
with a superior air. 

“ Indeed,” exclaimed Sir John, “then pray 
who has taken care of you, put you to bed at 
night, and washed and dressed you of a 
morning, taken you out for walks, or wheeled 
you in a perambulator ?” 

“ Mother !” cried the boy. “ Mother does 
all that — except for me. I dress myself — 
I take my own bath. Mother says I’m 
growing quite inde-in-de — ” 

“ Pendent !” screamed Moppet across the 
table. “ What a silly boy you are! You al- 
ways forget the names of things.” 

Moppet was getting excited. The small 
cheeks were flushed, and the big eyes were 
getting bigger, and Moppet was inclined to 
gesticulate a good deal when she talked, and 
to pat the table-cloth with two little hands 
to give point to her speech. 

“ Moppet,” said Mr. Danby, “ the hot cakes 


84 


are getting into your head. I propose an 
adjournment to Bedfordshire.” 

“No! no! no! Uncle Tom. We ain’t to 
go yet, is we ?” pleaded the child, snuggling 
close up to Sir John’s waistcoat, with a set- 
tled conviction that he was the higher author- 
ity. The lapse in grammar was the momen- 
tary result of excitement. In a general way 
Moppet’s tenses and persons were as correct 
as if she had been twenty. 

“ I think you ought to be tired, after your 
long journey,” said the baronet. 

“But it wasn’t a long journey. We had 
dinner first, and in the morning we walked 
on the Hoe. Isn’t that a funny name for a 
place? And we saw the sea, and Uncle 
Tom told us of the — ” 

“ Spanish Arcadia,” interrupted Laddie, 
who felt it was his turn now, “ and how 
Drake and the other captains were playing 
bowls on the Hoe, just where we were stand- 
ing that very minute, when the news of the 
Spanish ships came and they went off to 
meet them; and there was a storm, and 
there was no fighting wanted, for the storm 


85 


smashed all the ships, and they went back to 
King Philip without any masts, and Queen 
Elizabeth went on horseback to Tilbury, and 
that was the end of the Arcadia.” 

“For an historical synopsis I don’t call that 
bad,” said Mr. Danby ; “ nevertheless, I rec- 
ommend Bedfordshire if our little friends 
have finished their tea.” 

“I have,” said Lassie, with a contented 
yawn. 

Moppet did not want to go to bed. She 
had eaten less than the other two, but she 
had talked more, and had slapped the table, 
and had made faces, while Lassie and Laddie 
had been models of good manners. 

“ I wish you wouldn’t call it Bedfordshire,” 
she said, shaking her head vindictively at Mr. 
Danby. “ It makes it worse to go to bed 
when people make jokes about it !” 

Mr. Danby came round to where she sat, 
and took her up in his arms as if she had 
been a big doll instead of a small child. 

“ Say good-night to Sir John,” he said. 

Moppet stooped her face down to the bar- 
onet’s, and pursed up her red lips in the 


86 


prettiest little kiss, which was returned quite 
heartily. 

“ Take her away, Danby ; she is much too 
excited, and she is the funniest little thing I 
ever saw. Good -night, my dears,” he said 
to the others, as he rose and walked towards 
the door. “I hope you will spend a happy 
Christmas at Place. Adela, be sure the little 
things are comfortable, and that Nurse Dan- 
by’s instructions are obeyed.” 

The children laughed at this rude mention 
of Mr. Danby, and went off to bed repeat- 
ing the phrase, “ Nurse Danby,” with much 
chuckling and giggling. 


CHAPTER IY 


“Well, Jack,” said Danby, when Miss 
Hawberk had left the dining-room, and he 
and Sir John were alone, with their chairs 
drawn up to the hearth, their cigarettes 
lighted, and a bottle of Chateau Lafitte on 
the table between them. “Have you for- 
given the children for being so much smaller 
than you expected ?” 

“ I could forgive that youngest mite any- 
thing — smashing the Portland vase, if I 
owned it. She is what your friends over 
yonder ” (with a nod westward) “ would call 
an amusing little cuss.” 

“ She is a little lump of love,” answered 
Danby. “One has to know that child well 
to know how much there is in her.” 

“You are very weak about her, evidently 
— very fond of all three, no doubt ?” 

“ Yes, I am fond of them all. Lassie is 
going to grow up a beauty. I shall be very 


88 


proud of her twelve years hence, if I live so 
long.” 

“You say they are not actually your 
nephew and nieces ?” 

“ Not actually.” 

“But they are pretty nearly related to 
you, I take it ?” 

“ They are as near to my heart as they 
can be !” 

“ You are not very explicit.” 

“Why, no, Jack; that isn’t in the bond. 
It was agreed that the children were to 
come and go, and you were to know nothing 
about them, except that they were decently 
brought up, and not likely to make them- 
selves obnoxious. They were to have no 
claim upon you. This visit was not to be 
the thin end of the wedge.” 

“You needn’t echo me, Danby. I dare 
say I was rather cantankerous the other day.” 

“ No, no, Jack, you were open-handed and 
liberal, as you always are ; but naturally you 
didn’t want, by a casual kindness, to estab- 
lish a claim, or to give anybody’s poor rela- 
tions the right to bother you. We’ll stick to 


89 


the original notion, my dear friend. These 
children are hired to amuse you, and to 
give just the touch of homely mirthfulness 
that suits the season. They will enjoy all 
the good things your hospitality provides, 
and their frank happiness will enliven this 
solitary old house, and on the morning after 
Twelfth Night they will wish you good-bye, 
and will be seen no more at Penlyon Place.” 

“ Manage it your own way,” said Sir John, 
with a faint sigh. 

He was thinking of his daughter Lilian, 
his eldest daughter, who had never disobeyed 
him — whose marriage had gratified his pride 
as a father. If she had lived to be a mother 
how happy he would have been to see the 
third generation growing up about him, to 
have welcomed sturdy grandsons and bloom- 
ing granddaughters to the house of his fore- 
fathers, to have seen the line of the Pen- 
lyons carried on towards the dim future, with 
the promise of new honors and increasing 
wealth. 


The bell rang at half-past eight for prayers, 


90 


a big bell in a cupola over the hall door. Sir 
John was in his arm-chair near the hearth, 
with the crimson-bound prayer-book open on 
the table in front of him, waiting for the 
assembling of the household. The bell was 
still ringing when a scampering of little feet 
was heard in the hall, the door was opened 
rather violently, and Laddie and the two 
little girls came rushing in, their eyes spark- 
ling, their cheeks fresh and cold from the 
morning air. 

Moppet ran straight to Sir John, and lift- 
ed up her rose-bud mouth for a kiss, and was 
immediately taken upon his knee. It seemed 
the only possible thing to do with such a 
small creature, so round, so caressing, so 
bright and fresh with sweet morning breezes 
and morning sunshine. 

“What a veway nice garden yours is,” 
said Moppet, approvingly. 

“ You have seen the garden already. What 
an early bird you are !” 

“ Y es, but I didn’t catch any worms. I don’t 
like worms. They’re veway ugly,” said Mop- 
pet, shaking her head. “I’m not afraid of 


91 


them now, not even when they’re ever so 
big ; but I — do — not — like — them.” 

She slapped her open palm upon Sir John’s 
coat -sleeve to give emphasis to this final 
statement ; such a tiny, tiny hand, but with 
so much character in all its movements. 
Laddie and Lassie meanwhile were walking 
slowly round the breakfast -table, looking at 
the good things upon it. The big Cornish 
ham and savory pie and cold pheasants were 
on the sideboard, but the large round table 
was amply furnished with silver-covered 
dishes, in which the children admired them- 
selves, and crystal jars of jam, and cream- 
bowls, just the same as at last night’s tea. 

Laddie came to a full stop, gazing with 
wide-open eyes, and gave a long sigh of con- 
tent. 

“ Poor mother!” he said, almost in tears. 

“ What’s the matter with mother ?” asked 
Moppet from her perch on Sir John’s knee. 

“ She never has breakfast like this.” 

“She has what she likes. Mother isn’t 
greedy like you. Cake doesn’t make her 
happy, nor even jam,” said Moppet, with a 


philosophical air. “She has an egg every 
morning. My fowl lays it for her, some- 
times.” 

“ So you keep fowls, Moppet ?” asked Sir 
John, curiously interested in every detail of 
these small lives. 

“ I keep a fowl — a hen ; cocks are ever so 
much prettier, but they are fierce, and they 
won’t lay eggs. I have got a hen, and she 
has got one, and he has got one,” said Mop- 
pet, pointing to her brother and sister, “ and 
they all lay eggs for mother’s breakfast, ex- 
cept when they won’t.” 

“ Hush, my pet, I am going to read 
prayers.” 

“ Are you ? ” said Moppet, looking at him 
with wondering eyes. “ Why don’t you say 
your prayers dreckly you’re dressed, like we 
do?” 

“ These are family prayers, for everybody.” 

“Oh,” said Moppet, resignedly, with a 
very long face, “like church, I s’pose.” 

Adela Haw berk and Mr. Danby came in 
one by one during this conversation, and 
Adela now took Moppet, as it were, into 


93 


custody, while Danby looked after the other 
two. The three children were seated solemn- 
ly, with their little hands quietly folded, but 
their eyes roaming about the room, when the 
servants came filing in, and took their places 
near the door — the butler, portly and pomp- 
ous ; the valet, tall and slim, languidly ele- 
gant; the cook, colossal; the maids, fresh- 
colored and prim, in cotton frocks and smart 
white caps, and Miss Hawberk’s woman, 
bringing up the rear, in a neat black gown 
and a something of lace and ribbon, which 
was as little like a cap as she could make it. 

Moppet, with her mouth wide open, count- 
ed these good people in a loud whisper, and 
then, just as Sir John opened his book, and 
began the preliminary scriptures, turned to 
Miss Hawberk in irrepressible surprise, and 
exclaimed aloud : 

“ Twelve servants ! Mother has only one !” 

She looked very sorry the next instant, 
when she heard her little clear voice clash 
against Sir John’s deep tones, and till the 
very end of the family prayers she knelt or 
sat as mute as a statue. 


94 


The prayers were not too long for any 
one’s patience. The servants filed out of the 
room as quietly as they had entered, Miss 
Hawberk’s Abigail department with an in- 
dolent grace, and with the door held open 
for her by an admiring footman. Then came 
a delicious odor of coffee, and then the busi- 
ness of breakfast began in earnest, and the 
children, who had been up at the first glimpse 
of day, eager to find the toys in their stock- 
ings, “mother’s” little gifts among them, 
and who had been dressed and running about 
since half-past seven, were quite ready for 
the meal. Mr. Danby looked after them, 
and took care that they had only the things 
that were good for them, and those com- 
posed a somewhat Spartan bill of fare. 

The butler, who was on duty at the side- 
board, carving, approached Laddie as solemn- 
ly as if he were a grown-up person, and of- 
fered him a plate of pheasant and ham. 
Laddie looked appealingly at Uncle Tom. 

“ Not to be thought of, Laddie ! You are 
going to have a dinner fit for a Lord Mayor 
of London, and you must save yourself for 


95 


that. Bread-and-butter and an egg for break- 
fast, and nothing more.” 

Moppet, who was breakfasting on a basin 
of bread and milk, shook her head at her 
brother across the wide round table. 

“You know, Laddie, we never have meat 
for breakfast,” she said, “and we don’t al- 
ways have it for dinner. Sometimes we have 
rice-pudding, and sometimes we have batter- 
pudding,” she explained to the company in 
general; “and then we don’t want meat, 
you know. It’s better for us, and it’s cheaper 
for mother.” 

She was as much at home in the dining- 
room at Penlyon Place as if she had been in 
her own nursery. She had dragged a chair 
close to Sir John’s elbow, and had placed 
herself at his side unbidden. Moppet had a 
preference for the ruder sex, perhaps result- 
ing from her experience of her good friend 
Danby, who indulged her more than any- 
body else in her small world. She admired 
Adela, and she liked Adela’s frock, and the 
way her hair was done ; but she wanted to 
sit next the nice old gentleman with the 


96 


black eyebrows and silver-gray hair, who had 
taken her on his knee and talked to her in 
his big, deep voice. 

The church was close to the gates of Pen- 
lyon Place, and they all walked there to- 
gether on this fine Christmas morning. It 
was what people call a green Christmas, the 
air soft and warm, the sky blue, and the sun 
shining on the leafless branches of oak and 
beech and on the green underwood. 

“ There ought to be snow at Christmas,” 
said Lassie. “ It isn’t like Christmas with- 
out snowballing.” 

The children behaved so discreetly in 
church that it was clear they were good lit- 
tle church people, and that the service was 
familiar to them, though only Laddie made 
any pretence at reading his prayer-book, and 
he always read in the wrong place. Never a 
word spoke Moppet all through the long rus- 
tic service, though her eyes and her sensitive 
lips were eloquent of many emotions — won- 
der at the monuments on the wall in front 
of her, the knightly gentleman kneeling face 
to face with his stately lady, and a diminish- 


97 


in g line of six kneeling boys behind him, and 
a diminishing line of six kneeling girls be- 
hind her. 

“Had they really six apiece?” Moppet 
asked Sir John, as she trotted homeward by 
his side, her tiny hand held firmly in his 
strong fingers. 

“ Six what — who ?” 

“ Had the gentleman with the frill round 
his neck six little boys? and had the lady 
with the frill round her neck six little girls ?” 

“Yes, Moppet, it’s quite true, only they 
shared them.” 

“ Then why are the boys all on one side ?” 

“I suppose it’s a more orderly arrange- 
ment.” 

“Were they all dead — <lown to the very 
littlest boy — when that thing was made ?” 

“ I hope not, for it would give me a very 
poor opinion of Cornwall as a health resort 
two hundred and fifty years ago.” 

“ Was it as long ago as that when there 
were those little boys ?” asked Moppet. 

“ Longer. Nearly three hundred years !” 

“ Three hundred ! What a pity. I should 


98 


like to have six little boys like those to play 
with !” 

“ What would you do with them ?” 

“ Lots of things. We could play at battles 
— one can’t make a battle with three. It 
isn’t like it.” 

“ And it isn’t a fair fight either, Moppet, 
two to one.” 

“No, but Laddie thumps very hard. We 
have to push him down and sit upon him ; 
then we’ve won !” explained Moppet, with a 
triumphant air. 

Lassie had been walking ahead with Adela, 
but she came running back and placed herself 
on Sir John’s other side, pushing a very small 
hand, but not so tiny as Moppet’s, into his. 

“ I hope you like me a little bit, too,” she 
said, with dignity. 

“ Of course I do, Lassie. I think you are 
a very nice little girl.” 

“ But you don’t like me as well as you do 
her,” pointing to Moppet. 

“ Perhaps I know her best. She is such a 
forward young lady, and she and I are quite 
old friends.” 


99 


“ Not really older than me and you,” said 
Lassie. 

“Is it naughty to be forward?” Moppet 
asked gravely, having considered the phrase. 

“Not at four years old. You won’t be 
able to jump upon an elderly gentleman’s 
knee and put your arms round his neck when 
you’re four-and-twenty.” 

“ I shall be too big, and I shouldn’t want to 
unless I liked him as much as I like you. Little 
girls sit on their fathers’ knees, don’t they ?” 

“ Sometimes.” 

“ I mean good little girls. And that isn’t 
being forward, is it ?” 

“No, Moppet, no. Fathers are made to 
be sat upon.” 

“ I wish you would be my father.” 

“ "Why, Moppet ?”' 

“ Because I never had one.” 

“ Never ?” 

“Never, never. It’s curious, isn’t it? Other 
little girls say it’s curious when I tell them 
about it. Mother’s a” — stopping with a puz- 
zled look — “ the kind of person what has a 
dead husband.” 


100 


“ A widow,” suggested Sir John, startled 
at the turn of speech. 

“ Yes, a widow. And I was born after he 
was dead. It’s so long ago that I don’t re- 
member, and mother was very sorry then 
— awfully sorry; and she was so ill and so 
sorry that she didn’t care about me. She 
didn’t even know I was there. It was 
months and months before she knew any- 
thing about me; but, when she began to 
know, she liked me very much, and that’s 
why I’m her favorite child,” explained Mop- 
pet. 

“You mustn’t talk about favorites. A 
mother loves all her children alike.” 

“That isn’t true,” said Moppet. “But 
you’re not a mother, and you don’t know, 
so you didn’t mean to tell a story.” 

Sir John accepted this rebuke meekly, and 
as they had now arrived at the hall door he 
informed his young friend that he had some 
letters to write, and must part company with 
her for an hour or two. 

The little woman in red looked up at him 
with a sorrowful face. She was an adhesive 


101 


young person, and she had taken a fancy to 
her host. 

“ Mayn’t I come with you?” she asked, 
plaintively. “ I’ll be very quiet. I sit with 
mother when she writes her letters, and 
sometimes she lets me wipe the pen. She 
has such a dear little pen-holder, like a tor- 
toise-shell cat, only it’s not alive.” 

Sir John was polite but lirm. He was 
charmed with Moppet, but he preferred to 
write his letters without her company. 

“We shall meet at dinner,” he said, stoop- 
ing very low to kiss the atom of a hand. 

“And I shall sit next you?” asked Moppet. 

“ On my right hand, as the guest of the 
evening.” 


CHAPTER Y 


The Christmas custom at Penlyon Place 
was one which, in Sir John’s mind, reduced 
Christmas Day to a penitential anniversary. 
On Christmas Day the family dinner was at 
five o’clock instead of at eight, in order that 
the servants might enjoy their evening. 

“ Their evening,” echoed Sir John, rueful- 
1} T , when the matter was put before him as a 
sacrifice which the head of a respectable 
British household was called upon to make — 
“ their evening, forsooth ! As if they had 
not three hundred and sixty-five evenings in 
the year in which to take their ease and be 
merry from nine to eleven, but must needs 
throw our lives out of gear, and make our 
evening wretched with the memory of a ri- 
diculous dinner-hour, while they are uproari- 
ous over snap-dragon or forfeits in the serv- 
ants’ hall. The whole thing is an absurdity.” 

Absurd as it was, Sir John had been coaxed 


103 


into submission ; and now on this particular 
Christmas Day he was quite resigned to the 
five-o’clock dinner, and was amused at the 
delight of the little hirelings, who clapped 
their hands and jumped and chirped like 
three grasshoppers. 

“ We’re going to have late dinner!” they 
cried, in a chorus of small silvery voices. 

“ You poor things !” exclaimed Miss Haw- 
berk. “Do you never have late dinner at 
home, not even on Christmas Day ?” 

“Never,” answered the boy. “There isn’t 
any late dinner. Mother dines with us very 
early, and then in the evening, when the 
candles are lit, we all have tea, mother and 
all of us, and jam sandwiches, and then I sit 
by the fire and learn my spelling while moth- 
er puts Lassie and Moppet to bed.” 

“ He stops up last because he’s the oldest,” 
explained Moppet, who always addressed her 
small speeches to Sir John, “and we don’t 
learn no spelling because we’re too young. 
But I know most of Laddie’s words,” she 
added, with sly triumph. “ Laddie is very 
slow, and I’m rather quick.” 


104 


“Too quick, Moppet,” said Mr. Danby, 
lifting the tiny creature in his arms, and 
looking at her with a touch of melancholy. 
“ If my watch were to go as fast as that 
small brain of yours I should be afraid the 
works would wear out.” 

The children went for a walk on the cliffs 
with Miss Hawberk and the gentleman whom 
they called Uncle Tom, and while they were 
strolling in the gray softness of a green 
Christmas, watching the sea-gulls and the 
shags, Sir John came across the hillocky turf 
and joined them. 

“Have you written all your letters?” asked 
Moppet, severely. 

“As many as I cared to write, little one. 
The mild afternoon tempted me to a stroll.” 

Moppet waited for no permission, but at 
once possessed herself of Sir John’s fore- 
finger, and held on to his thick doeskin 
glove with a firm little grip. He could but 
wonder that such tiny fingers could hold 
him so tight. 

“ And what does Moppet think of the sea?” 
he asked. 


105 


“ I like your sea better than our sea at 
home. There are such big, big, big rocks, 
and such a lot of black birds, such a lot of 
white and gray birds. Uncle Tom showed 
us a rock just now that was all covered with 
birds. You couldn’t see the rocks for the 
birds. And then he threw a stone, and they 
all flew off screaming — screaming like human 
persons. It was so funny !” 

“ Then it seems you live by the sea when 
you are at home, Moppet ?” 

“Always — ’cept when it’s the season, and 
then mother lets her house, and we go to a 
farm where there are calves and pigs and 
ducks and chickens, and where we all wear 
wooden shoes and run about in the mud. 
It’s lovely !” 

“ So, Moppet, you are only half an English 
girl. You live on the other side of the Chan- 
nel?” said Sir John. 

“I don’t know what you mean by the 
Channel. We live in F’ance, but we’re not 
F’ench.” The letter “r” presented difficul- 
ties not always surmounted even in Moppet’s 
exceptionally distinct speech. “ Mother’s 


106 


English, and father’s English, and we’re 
English.” 

“ Your father was English,” corrected Sir 
John. “ You told me your father was dead.” 

“ Ah, but we never say was about father. 
Mother likes us to think that he’s always 
with us, though we can’t see him. His spirit 
is there, you know, and he is glad when we 
are good, and he is very sorry when we are 
naughty — most of all, when we are unkind 
to each other. Laddie didn’t think of that 
the day he gave me the bad slap,” continued 
Moppet, as if she were speaking of an event 
in history, like the Indian Mutiny, “or he 
wouldn’t have done it ; but he thought of 
it afterwards, and he was awfully sorry for 
having grieved father.” 

“ How is it you don’t all talk French, Mop- 
pet, since you live in France?” 

“ Because we always live with mother, and 
she talks English to us. She doesn’t want us 
to learn French from servants and common 
people ; so we only know the useful words 
— things you know — food and clothes and 
such things, and how to ask our way, or to 


107 


tell people where we live, if ever we should 
be lost. And we pick up words sometimes. 
We can’t help learning words on the sands 
when we hear the little French children who 
are playing there, though mother won’t let 
us play with them. And mother is going to 
teach us French grammar by-and-by, when 
we are old enough to learn properly. But 
I,” concluded Moppet, putting on a conse- 
quential air, “ am not to learn anything for 
ever so long.” 

“What a privileged little person! But 
why not, pray ?” 

“ Because I’m much too clever, Mr. Min- 
chin said. I’m greatly in advance of my 
age. If I were forced or worried about les- 
sons I might have water on the brain !” 

Nothing could have surpassed Moppet’s 
grand air as she mentioned this possibility. 

“ Mr. Minchin is your doctor, I suppose ?” 

“Yes; he’s a hoppafist.” 

“ I thought so,” growled Sir J ohn. “ No- 
body but a fool would have talked in that 
way before a dear little girl.” 

“ No, he isn’t a fool, really,” replied Mop- 


108 


pet, with her most grown-up air. “He 
didn’t know I could hear him. I was play- 
ing in the garden, and the parlor window 
was open, and I took my little chair under 
the window, and sat there quietly and lis- 
tened.” 

“ That was not right, Moppet.” 

“ So mother said when I told her. But 
why shouldn’t I listen? It was all about 
me.” 

“ Perhaps ; but you weren’t meant to hear 
it.” ' 

“ I hate secrets — about me. I don’t like 
doctors that whisper in corners about medi- 
cines, and next morning mother comes with 
a dose of something horrid, because of what 
the doctor said yesterday when I was play- 
ing with my doll. I call that mean of a doc- 
tor. But Mr. Minchin isn’t like the horrid 
doctors. He only gives us globules or tab- 
laws. Can you swallow tablaws without tast- 
ing them ?” 

“ I suppose you mean tabloids. Ho, Mop- 
pet, I have never tried them. The doctor 
hasn’t attacked the gout-fiend with anything 


so mild. Homoeopathy has never tempered 
the wind for this shorn lamb.” 

Dinner at Penlyon Place on that particu- 
lar Christmas Day was a grand function. 
The cook had surpassed herself in the prep- 
aration of plum-pudding, mince-pies, creams, 
jellies, and junket, stimulated to effort by the 
thought of the children. What was the use 
of making tarts or jellies for Sir John’s 
table, when the master of the house rarely 
touched anything of that kind, hardly looked 
at the best trifle or tipsy-cake that could be 
offered to him ; but there was some pleasure 
in cooking nice things for children, even if 
the children were to make themselves ill by 
eating too much or too many things. Christ- 
mas came only once in the year, and no 
restraining consideration of health or the 
doctor should be allowed to spoil such a joy- 
ful season. 

So the creams and jellies and junket were 
placed upon the dinner - table, as if it had 
been a ball-supper, in order that the children 
should see them ; and loud and joyous were 


110 


the childish exclamations at the appearance 
of the feast, at the cluster of tall candles in 
the old silver candelabra, the old-fashioned 
epergne with its crystal dishes of bonbons 
and sparkling fruits, crowned with a large 
basket-shaped dish of great purple grapes ; 
the flowers, the dazzling white damask, and 
diamond cut glass. There was nothing new 
or modish from Venice or Bohemia, no Lib- 
erty silk or fantastic ornamentation. Sir 
John Penlyon’s dinner-table was not in the 
movement. Indeed, it was arranged very 
much as it had been for his grandfather 
when the century was young. 

“I never saw late dinner before,” said 
Moppet ; and then, with a sigh of content- 
ment, she exclaimed, “ It’s very beautiful !” 

The children were dressed for dinner, and 
there was nothing shabbily -genteel or taw- 
drily -fine in their raiment. Laddie wore a 
neat little black velvet suit, and the two lit- 
tle girls were in white cashmere frocks, 
which made them look more like dolls than 
ever. 

The crowning glory of the feast Tvas the 


Ill 


pudding. The room was darkened in the 
old-fashioned way, and the great plum -pud- 
ding was brought in blazing with blue flame, 
and all the company looked like ghosts in 
the blue, unearthly light, a ceremony repeat- 
ed all over the land on that day in houses 
where there were children — rather boring 
for the grown-ups, but such a rapturous ex- 
perience for the children, especially for the 
smallest child, who is just a little frightened 
perhaps at the entrance of the demon pud- 
ding, and hysterical with delight when the 
first shock is over. 

The pudding was saluted with a tremen- 
dous clapping of tiny hands, which sounded 
like the applause of an audience of fairies. 
The whole business was rapture, most of all 
when it was discovered that there were some 
new sixpences in the pudding. The excite- 
ment increased to fever-heat when Mr. Dan- 
by found a sixpence in his portion, and ex- 
hibited an amount of pleasure which indicat- 
ed an avaricious disposition, and quite shocked 
Moppet. 

“ I suppose you’ll give me your sixpence,” 


112 


she said, stretching out a tiny palm in his di- 
rection ; “ you can’t want it yourself.” 

“ Can’t I ?” ejaculated Mr. Danby. “ I do 
want it very much. Sixpence is sixpence all 
the world over.” 

“But a man of your age can’t want six- 
pence,” with grave remonstrance. 

“ Can’t he ? Why, there are lots of things 
that sixpence will buy for a man of my age 
— a cigar, for instance.” 

“ But you can’t want that sixpence. You 
have always lots of money. I have seen you 
take out sovereigns — a handful of sovereigns 
— from your waistcoat-pocket when you were 
paying for our brioches at the pastry-cook’s, 
or buying us toys in the Grande Rue. You 
can’t want that sixpence.” 

“Not to spend, Moppet. I shall keep it 
for luck. I shall bore a hole in it, and 
wear it next my heart in memory of a 
Christmas dinner with you — your first late 
dinner.” 

“I’m glad of that,” said Moppet, greatly 
relieved. “ I was afraid you were a miser, 
after all.” 


113 


Laddie and Lassie greeted this speech with 
uproarious laughter. 

“A miser! Uncle Tom a miser! Why, 
you know he is always bringing us things. 
Mother has to be quite cross sometimes to 
prevent him spending too much money upon 
us,” said Laddie. 

“ Uncle Tom gave us our silk stockings,” 
explained Lassie. “ They’re real silk; not 
spun silk, like most little girls have. They 
came in a letter from Wear & Squells. 
Wasn’t that a funny letter ? Mother told 
Uncle Tom he was dreadfully extravagant ; 
but he only laughed. He is not the least lit- 
tle bit of a miser ; not nearly such a miser as 
Moppet, who puts all her half-francs into a 
money-box that won’t open, and then asks 
mother for sous to spend.” 

There was more than one sixpence in the 
pudding. Each of the children discovered a 
glittering new coin, and in Moppet’s portion 
there were two sixpences. The stout and 
serious butler, helping the pudding on the 
carving-table by the light of a single candle, 
was suspected of treasonable practices. 

8 


114 


If the pudding with its halo of blue flame 
were a glorious thing, how much more glori- 
ous was the Christmas-tree in the great 
Gothic hall — the Christmas-tree, with innu- 
merable tapers that were reflected in the 
bright armor of those dead and gone war- 
riors whose prowess had helped to win vic- 
tory at Agincourt, or whose strength had pro- 
longed the bitter struggle at home in the Wars 
of the Roses. Miss Ilawberk had sent round 
some little notes of invitation, swift and 
sudden as the fiery cross, and had assem- 
bled all the little ladies and gentlemen of the 
neighborhood, the pretty, fair -haired girls 
from the Rectory, and the children of the 
only two gentlefolk’s families within an easy 
drive of Penlyon Place, and Mr. Hicholls, 
the old bachelor doctor, had also been in- 
vited — perhaps in order to throw in a warn- 
ing word occasionally when the revellers 
seemed inclined to overeat themselves. All 
the little girls had long hair, combed and 
brushed and crinkled to perfection ; and they 
looked rather suspiciously at Lassie and 
Moppet’s round -cropped heads, as little Af- 


115 


ricans with their hair caked in clay might 
look at the children of a different tribe who 
wore no clay. 

“Have you and her had a fever?” one lit- 
tle girl inquired of Moppet, pointing at Las- 
sie as she asked the question. 

“ JSTo !” 

“ Then why was your hair cut so short ?” 

“ That’s the F’ench way,” explained Mop- 
pet, gravely. “ We are not F’ench ; but we 
live in F’ance, and mother likes our hair cut 
in the F’ench way.” 

“Oh,” sighed the long-haired child, re- 
lieved in mind. “ It’s very ugly. Grade 
had her hair like that once, but then she’d 
had a fever. Your mother must be a funny 
woman.” 

“No she ain’t,” cried Moppet, firing in- 
stantly. “ She ain’t half so funny as your 
mother.” 

Moppet pointed to a stout lady in black 
velvet and a Eoman sash — a stout lady 
with a rubicund face. “ I shouldn’t like 
my mother to be as fat as yours, or as 
red,” said Moppet; and with this parting 


116 


shot inarched off and left the long-haired, 
beautifully -brushed and crinkled little girl 
inanely staring, shocked, but far too stupid 
to retort, hereditary fleshiness muffling her 
intellectual faculties. 

Sir John Penlyon had just seated himself 
on the great oaken settle in the chimney- 
corner, after somewhat languidly performing 
his duty as host. Moppet walked straight 
to him, clambered on his knee, and nestled 
her head in his waistcoat, gazing up at him 
with very much the same dumb devotion he 
had seen in the topaz eyes of a favorite Clum- 
ber spaniel. 

“ Why, Moppet, are you tired of your new 
little friends ?” he asked, kindly. 

“ I don’t like children ; they are so silly,” 
answered Moppet, with decision. “ I like 
you much better.” 

“Do you really, now? I wonder how 
much you like me. As well as you like 
junket ?” 

“ Oh, what a silly question ! As if one 
could care for any nice thing to eat as well 
as one cares for a live person !” 


117 


“ Couldn’t one ? I believe there are little 
boys in Boscastle who are fonder of plum- 
pudding than of all their relations.” 

“ They must be horrid little boys. Laddie 
is greedy, but he is not so greedy as that. I 
shouldn’t like to live in the same house with 
him if he were.” 

“ For fear he should turn cannibal and eat 

you f” 

“What is a camomile, and does it really 
eat people ?” 

“Never mind, Moppet; there are none in 
our part of the w r orld,” said Sir John, hasti- 
ly, feeling that he had made a faux jpas , and 
might set Moppet dreaming of cannibals if 
he explained their nature and attributes. 

He had been warned by his friend Danby 
that Moppet was given to dreaming at night 
of anything that had moved her wonder or 
her fear in the day, and that she would 
awaken from such dreams in a cold perspi- 
ration, with wild eyes and clinched hands. 
Her sleep had been haunted by goblins, and 
made hideous by men who had sold their 
shadows, and by wolves who were hungry 


118 


for little girls in red cloaks. It had been 
found perilous to tell her the old familiar 
fairy tales which most children have been 
told, and from which many children have 
suffered in the dim early years, before the 
restrictions of space and climate are under- 
stood, and wolves, bears, and lions located 
in their own peculiar latitudes. 

Sir John looked down at the little dark 
head which was pressed so lovingly against 
his w r aistcoat, and at the long dark lashes 
that veiled the deep-set eyes. 

“ And so you really like me ?” said he. 

“ I really love you ; not so much as moth- 
er, but veway, veway much.” 

“ As much as Danby — as Uncle Tom?” 

“ Better than Uncle Tom ; but please don’t 
tell him so. It might make him unhappy.” 

“ I dare say it would. Uncle Tom has a 
jealous disposition. He might shut you up 
in a brazen tower.” 

Another faux pas. Moppet would be 
dreaming of brazen towers. Imagination, 
assisted by plum-pudding, would run readily 
into tormenting visions. 


119 


Happily, Moppet made no remark upon 
the tower. She was thinking — thinking 
deeply ; and presently she looked up at Sir 
John with grave gray eyes, and said : 

“I believe I love you better than Uncle 
Tom, because you are a grander gentleman, 55 
she said, musingly, “ and because you have 
this beautiful big house. It is yours, isn’t it 
— your veway, veway own ?” 

“ My very, very own. And so you like my 
house, Moppet ? And will you be sorry to go 
away P 

“ Oh no, because I shall be going to 
mother.” 

“ Then you like your own home better 
than this big house P 

“ Ho I don’t. I should be very silly if I 
did. Home is a funny little house, in a fun- 
ny little sloping garden on the side of a hill. 
Uncle Tom says it is very healthy. There 
is a tiny salon , and a tiny dining-room, and 
a dear little kitchen, where the bonne a tout 
faire lives, and four tiny bedrooms. It was 
a fisherman’s cottage once, and then an Eng- 
lish lady — an old lady — bought it, and made 


120 


new rooms, and had it all made pretty, and 
then she died; and then Uncle Tom hap- 
pened to see it, and took it for mother.” 

“ And was my little Moppet born there ?” 

“No; I was born a long, long way off — up 
in the hills.” 

“ What hills ?” 

“ The northwest provinces. It’s an awful 
long way off — but I can’t tell you anything 
about it,” added Moppet, with a solemn 
shake of her cropped head, “for I was 
born before I can remember. Laddie says 
we all came over the sea — but we mustn’t 
talk to mother about that time, and Lad- 
die’s very stupid — he may have told me all 
wrong.” 

“And doesn’t Lassie remember coming 
home in the ship?” 

“She remembers a gentleman who gave 
her goodies.” 

“ But not the ship ?” 

“ No, not the ship ; but she thinks there 
must have been a ship, for the wind blew 
very hard, and the gentleman went up and 
down as if he was in a swing. Laddie pre- 


121 


tends to remember all the sailors’ names, but 
I don’t think he really can.” 

“ And the only house you can remember 
is the house on the cliff ?” 

“ Where mother is now — yes, that’s the 
only one, and I’m very fond of it. Are you 
fond of this house ?” 

“ Yes, Moppet; one is always fond of the 
house in which one was born. I was born 
here.” 

Moppet looked up at him wonderingly. 

“ Is that very surprising ?” he asked, smil- 
ing down at her. 

“ It seems rather surprising you should 
ever have been born,” replied Moppet, frank- 
ly ; “ you are so veway old.” 

“Yes; but one has to begin, you see, Mop- 
pet.” 

“ It must have been a twemendously long 
time ago when you and Uncle Tom began.” 

The explosion of a cracker startled Mop- 
pet from the meditative mood. It was the 
signal for the rifling of the tree. The crack- 
ers — the gold and silver and sapphire and 
ruby and emerald crackers — were being dis- 


122 


tributed, and were exploding in every direc- 
tion before Moppet could run to the tree and 
hold up two tiny hands, crying, excitedly, 
“ Me, me, me !” 

It had been settled that the tree was not 
to be touched till the visitors had finished 
their tea. The house-party, represented by 
Laddie and Lassie, had been fuming and 
fretting at the slowness with which cakes 
and buns were consumed ; but now Uncle 
Tom, robed in a long maroon-velvet dress- 
ing-gown of Sir John’s, with a black velvet 
cap on his head to represent a necromancer, 
had given the signal, and was scattering 
crackers among the eager hands of dancing, 
leaping children, all crying, “ Me, me !” 

Mr. Danby had taken a good deal of 
trouble to disguise himself. He had made 
himself a long beard of white horsehair — a 
beard which would have done for old Father 
Time himself — and which reached from Mr. 
Danby’s ears to his waist. But the children 
hardly looked at him, and expressed no as- 
tonishment at his appearance. All they cared 
for was to get the crackers and the toys. 


123 


“Me, me! Another cracker, please. Please, 
please give me one !” That was the cry, varied 
by smaller voices saying, “ Dive me a doll,” 
“ Dive me dat pretty fing up dere !” pointing 
to a glittering gilt watch or to a fairy in 
star-spangled skirt. 

But the toys on the tree were little dainty 
things more for ornament than use. The 
real toys were in a great washing - basket 
which two men brought into the hall, stag- 
gering under it. 

There were toys enough for everybody, 
and Mr. Danby distributed them with admi- 
rable judgment. He had even a packet for 
Miss Hawberk, tied with blue ribbon, out of 
which rolled a pair of long gloves such as 
young ladies love. Adela screamed at sight 
of the gloves, just as the children screamed 
at their railway engines and stone bricks. 

When every child had received the most 
appropriate toy possible and general content- 
ment prevailed, the basket was not even half 
empty. Laddie peered into its depths curi- 
ously, hugging his clock-work steam-engine 
under his arm — a tiny green engine as fine 


124 


as those on the South-Western Kail way, 
which are said to be the finest in England. 

“ There are lots more toys,” he said to Mr. 
Danby, with that shrewd, insinuating look 
which marks childish greed. “ Are we going 
to have those ?” 

“ No, Laddie. You have had your share. 
Those are for other children.” 

“ What children ?” 

“ You’ll see, Laddie, all in good time.” 

Laddie thought the only good time would 
be a time which would give him a share in 
those unopened parcels. 

For Moppet the Necromancer had a doll — 
a lovely, fair-haired doll, with staring blue 
eyes which occupied about a third of her 
face. Nature has endowed the expensive 
doll with these enormous eyes. To Moppet’s 
lively imagination the doll, from the moment 
it was deposited in her arms, became a per- 
sonage. 

“ My darling, you must have a name !” she 
murmured, tenderly. “ I shall call you Mary, 
after me.” 

She ran to Sir John with her treasure. 


125 


“ Isn’t she lovely ?” she asked. And then, 
without waiting to be answered, “ Her name 
is Mary.” 

His wife’s name! He started ever so 
slightly at the familiar sound. 

“ Why Mary ?” 

“ She is called after me. I am her god- 
mother. I shall have to teach her the cate- 
chism — the catechism that Laddie has to 
learn.” 

“ And so you have an alias. I thought 
your name was Moppet,” said Sir John, as 
she seated her doll on his knee and stood 
leaning against him, touching and examin- 
ing that divine piece of waxwork, its lace 
petticoats, its blue silk shoes and open-work 
socks — a very paragon of dolls. 

“You knew my real name wasn’t Mop- 
pet,” she said. “Nobody was ever chris- 
tened Moppet ! It’s only one of mother’s 
nonsense names, like Laddie and Lassie.” 

“ Oh, then you all have bettermost names 
for high-days and holidays. Pray, what is 
Laddie’s name ?” 


“ The same as yours.” 


126 


“ Oh, he is John, is he?” 

“ Yes, John — but not Sir John. He is not 
a bawonight,” making a great deal of the 
strange word which the servants had taught 
her, as an attribute of the grave elderly gen- 
tleman to whom she had taken so kindly. 
“Will he be a bawonight when he grows 
up?” 

“ That’s his own lookout. I take it he will 
have to win his baronetcy.” 

“ Win it ? At cards ?” 

“ Why, what does my little Moppet know 
of cards ?” 

“ Lots. We play at spekilation with Uncle 
Tom, for nuts, and vingt-et-un, and he says 
that’s almost as good as bac-bac-bac-ca-wa !” 

She stumbled over the word, but finished 
it triumphantly. 

“ I am afraid Uncle Tom is a dangerous 
person to be with children.” 

“He is. Mother says so. He takes us 
down to the plage and gives us donkey-rides, 
and I once fell off” — this with an air — “ and 
grazed my elbow. The blood came through 
the sleeve of my overall. Lassie has never 


m 


fallen off a donkey. Laddie has. They gen- 
erally lie down with him. He kicks them 
too much. They will bear a good deal of 
kicking because their skins are so thick, but 
Laddie overdoes it. He is not a nice boy — 
not always,” Moppet concluded, musingly. 

She liked standing quietly at Sir John’s 
knee with her doll, though the other chil- 
dren were playing Post in a noisy circle 
round Mr. Danby and Adela, on the other 
side of the hall. The many-colored tapers 
on the Christmas-tree were all extinguished 
but not burned out, only half-burned, and the 
tree was still covered with golden balls, and 
tiny oranges, and glittering green and ruby 
fish, and fairy dolls nodding and trembling in 
space. 

“ Wouldn’t you like to go and play with 
the children over there, Moppet ? They seem 
to be having a spirited game.” 

“ I don’t care for games. I like to be here 
with you and Mary. You don’t mind me 
here, do you ?” 

“ Ho, my dear. I think I can put up with 
you till your bedtime.” 


128 


That word bedtime is always a damper to 
juvenile spirits. In all those early years of 
life the idea of bed is pretty much what the 
idea of Portland or Dartmoor is to the crim- 
inal classes. Children hear their elders talk 
of wanting to go to bed, and wonder at such 
a perverted taste. There is always a sense 
of humiliation in that premature banishment. 
The grown-ups sit smiling and talking — bid 
good-night condescendingly in a parenthesis 
— and one feels that their evening is only 
just beginning. The elder sisters step into 
a carriage perhaps, and are whisked off to 
the opera or playhouse, while strong-armed 
Nurse conducts the little ones to their nurs- 
ery cots — to premature night and darkness 
that seem endless. It is a cruel inequality 
of fortune. 

“ Isn’t it a lovely tree ?” Moppet inquired 
presently, her eyes wandering to that fairy- 
like conifer in the middle of the hall, with 
horizontal branches rising tier above tier, 
laden with things of beauty 

“ Yes, it is a fine specimen of the arbor 
toyensis.” 


3 29 


“There’s only one thing that makes me 
sorry about it,” said Moppet, with a sigh. 

•“ And what may that be ?” 

“ Everybody hasn’t got a tree.” 

“Ah, you are for social equality. You 
would like all children to have just as good 
a Christmas as you are having.” 

“Why shouldn’t they? They’re just as 
good as me, ain’t they ?” 

“ I suppose they are, Moppet ; only you 
happen to be here, and they are somewhere 
else. But don’t be downhearted, my pet ; 
there are a great many Christmas-trees 
blooming with toys and golden flowers to- 
night, and thousands of children dancing 
round them, just as happy as you and Las- 
sie and Laddie.” 

“Are there more children who have a 
Christmas-tree than the children who haven’t 
a Christmas-tree?” asked Moppet, after a 
pause, with the child’s love of statistics. 

“No; I’m afraid there are more of the 
treeless children than of the fortunate 
ones.” 

“ Isn’t that a pity ? If it was only the 

9 


130 


naughty children who had to go without 
toys, it wouldn’t matter,” argued Moppet, 
severely ; “ but I dare say there are naugh- 
ty boys and girls getting toys and crackers, 
while there are poor good children without 
so much as a penny toy, only because their 
mothers haven’t any money. Our mother 
isn’t rich, but we’ve had a Christmas-tree 
ever since I can remember — quite two 
Christmases. It was only a little tree ; but 
such a pretty little tree. Uncle Tom sent 
us all the toys and ornaments and little col- 
ored candles in a big wooden box ; and we 
all helped mother to dress the tree. It was 
more fun than not knowing anything about 
it, and standing outside the door in the 
dark, and then coming in and being surprised. 
Our fun lasted ever so much longer, and we 
were surprised, after all, when we saw the 
tree with the candles all lighted. It wasn’t 
a bit like the same tree.” 

“ And you wouldn’t have known the dolls 
if you had met them in the street ?” said Sir 
John, smiling at her grave earnestness. 

Bedtime, the inexorable summons, put an 


131 


end to the conversation. The fair -haired 
Kectory girls and the other little people 
were bidding good-night, and the girls were* 
being muffled in pink and blue hoods and 
cloaks, while the boys struggled manfully 
with the sleeves of their warm overcoats. 

A cold wind blew in from the vestibule 
when the outer door was opened — a nipping, 
frosty wind. 

“ There’s a change in the weather,” said 
Mr. Danby. “ They’ve had snow at Brighton 
and at Portsmouth. I shouldn’t wonder if 
our green Christmas were to change to a 
white one.” 

“ Oh, how nice that would be !” cried Lad- 
die, clapping his hands. 

“Would you like to be snowed up at Pen- 
lyon Place? Well, we don’t often get snow 
in Cornwall ; but perhaps we may be able 
to oblige you,” answered Sir John, gayly. 


CHAPTER VI 


When Moppet looked out of window next 
morning she looked at a white world — a 
world of fairy- like trees, whose interlacing 
branches made a brilliant lace -work that 
sparkled in the sun. A northeast wind was 
blowing under a blue, cloudless sky. It must 
have been snowing for a long time to cover 
the park and gardens with that thick white 
carpet, but the morning was bright and 
sunny, and Moppet thought the change de- 
lightful. 

Pleasant news greeted her at breakfast. 
First, a little present from mother : a soft 
Shetland shawl, knitted by mother’s own 
fingers, and snowy -white like the outside 
world — a shawl to wrap Moppet’s head and 
shoulders when she ran out into the garden. 
Lassie had one exactly like it, and Laddie 
had a big, thick white scarf. They had 
come in a post-parcel to Mr. Danby. 


133 


“Bid mother know it was going to be 
cold ?” wondered Lassie. 

“ Mother’s thoughts always go before 
things,” said Moppet, gravely. 

The next pleasantness was the news of a 
party, another children’s party, which had 
been planned by Mr. Banby and Miss Haw- 
berk, and which was submitted to Sir John 
for approval. 

Would he object to their giving the cot- 
tage children a tea-party in the school- 
house that evening, with the reversion of 
the Christmas-tree as the feature of the 
entertainment? They had plenty of toys 
left for distribution, plenty of Tom Smith 
crackers. 

“ Bear Tom Smith,” sighed Moppet. 
“ What a nice man he must be! You don’t 
object, do you ?” she asked Sir John, squeez- 
ing her chair, with a high cushion upon it to 
bring her up to table level, a little closer to 
his own. “ You’d like the nice cottage chil- 
dren to have some fun ? They all looked so 
nice at church yesterday, in their pretty red 
cloaks.” 


184 


“Sir John gave them those red cloaks,” 
observed Miss Hawberk. 

“ How good of you ! But you don’t ob- 
ject, do you? They are such tidy children. 
I’m sure they’ll be careful of their toys.” 

Moppet had her doll on her lap, wedged 
in between her pinafore and the table, and 
supposed to be consuming occasional spoon- 
fuls of bread and milk. 

Sir John did not object. They could have 
a tea-party for all the children in Cornwall 
if they liked, if they could get the pixies to 
bring them. 

“ What are the pixies ?” 

Moppet had to be told about the pixies 
before she would peacefully finish her bread 
and milk. She rattled her spoon against 
the basin in her excitement, and the dark 
gray eyes seemed to grow larger as she 
listened. 

There were occasional snow showers in the 
day, just enough to maintain the freshness of 
that vast white carpet which had been un- 
rolled over the park. The northeast wind 


135 


blew with a biting sharpness which it rarely 
knows on that western coast, and swept every 
cloudlet out of the bright blue sky. The 
children wore their warmest wraps when they 
ran out on the terrace, which the gardeners 
had swept from end to end, piling up a bank 
of snow on the outer side, all the length of 
the broad walk, a store of material for the 
building of a snow man which Mr. Danby 
assisted them to pile up at the farther end 
of the walk, out of sight of the windows lest 
he should be an eyesore. 

This rugged and shapeless monster was 
not completed till the children’s early dinner, 
though they toiled vigorously, digging oat 
lnmps of snow from the bank, running back- 
ward and forward, flushed and eager, fetching 
and carrying for that accomplished sculptor, 
Uncle Tom, who desisted not from his labors 
till the monster to wered like Milton’s Lucifer, 
but with no more shape or likeness of hu- 
manity than a pillar post-box. The likeness 
was achieved presently by an old cloth cap of 
Uncle Tom’s, a short pipe, two bits of coal for 
eyes, and two bits of stick for nose and mouth. 


136 


“ I think he’ll do now,” said the sculptor, 
complacently. 

“He’s rather crooked,” criticised Laddie, 
while the little girls stood flushed and pant- 
ing, with no feeling but admiration for this 
great work of art. 

“ Don’t say that, Laddie,” cried the sculp- 
tor. “Crookedness means destruction. A 
snow man must hold himself straight or he 
is doomed. You’d better bring me some 
more snow.” 

They rushed off with their spades and 
wooden baskets — spades and baskets that had 
been used on the beach by a former genera- 
tion, and which had been produced from an 
old toy -closet by Sarah, the house -maid. 
They brought more snow, and Uncle Tom 
thickened the base of the monster till he 
looked like a Druidic monument, and then 
they left him to his fate. 

“ He’ll last now till the thaw,” said Uncle 
Tom. 

“Will the thaw spoil him?” 

“ Yes, when the thaw comes he will silent- 
ly vanish away, like the Snark. There will 


137 


be nothing left of him but a great puddle at 
that end of the terrace.” 

Uncle Tom sent the children off to get 
their shoes and stockings changed before 
dinner. He was like a nurse in his care of 
them. 

Sir John was out shooting, tramping 
through snowy plantations, and the luncheon- 
dinner was a very noisy meal. Mr. Danby 
and Miss Hawberk let the children do as 
they liked. It was Bank Holiday, and that 
meant liberty for great and small, Mr. Danby 
said. There never was a merrier meal eaten 
at Place — certainly not within Adela’s rec- 
ollection. 

“Christmas used to be so dreadfully dull 
in this house,” said the young lady. “ One 
felt one ought to be a little livelier because 
it was Christmas, and that only made one 
feel duller, don’t you know. It was all very 
well for you, Mr. Danby, out shooting all 
day with Sir John and playing billiards in the 
evening, but I could only read a novel, or 
brood over all the Cinderellas I was missing.” 

Poor Adela had been sent to Penlyon 


138 


Place, as into captivity, for more Christmas 
seasons than she could count, her mother and 
father declaring that it was her duty to go 
and amuse her uncle at that festive time, 
since she was his favorite niece. 

This idea of favoritism on Sir John’s part 
had no definite basis, but Mrs. Hawberk was 
in the habit of talking as if Adela were her 
uncle’s acknowledged heiress. 

“ He must leave his money to somebody,” 
she told her husband, “ and why not to Adela ? 
After all these years of estrangement he will 
never take Sibyl into favor again.” 

“ There is nothing so sure to happen as the 
unexpected,” said Mr. Hawberk, sententious- 
ly. “ You had better not reckon Adela’s 
chickens before they are hatched. Your 
brother is not obliged to leave his money to 
anybody. He may leave it to a hospital, as 
many such old curmudgeons do.” 

“ You have no occasion to call my brother 
a curmudgeon.” 

“ He has never given me any reason to call 
him anything else.” 

“ You and he never understood each other. 





139 


As for Adela, he likes having her at Place, 
and there can he no doubt he is very much 
attached to her.” 

The village party was quite as successful 
as the genteel party, and Moppet was a much 
more prominent personage in the school- 
rooms than she had been the night before at 
Penlyon. Her whole heart was in this rus- 
tic entertainment. Her eyes shone like stars, 
her cheeks were flushed with delight. The 
pretty little school - house, with rooms for 
school-master attached, had been built thirty 
years before by Sir John, soon after he came 
to his own, and everything about the build- 
ing was sound and neat and trim. The 
Christmas-tree was in the boys’ school-room, 
the tea-party was in the girls’ room. The 
children were to know nothing about that 
glorious tree or that noble collection of toys 
for distribution till after tea, when the lights 
were to be suddenly extinguished, and the 
door between the two school-rooms was to 
be opened, and the tree was to be seen with 
all its fairy -like tapers burning. 


140 


It would be a thrilling moment, and Mop- 
pet’s heart beat fast as she thought of the 
children’s rapture. “ Have they never seen 
a tree,” she asked Adela — “ never, never, 
never ?” 

“ Ho, they have never seen one. There 
are so few great houses about, and there 
have been no children at Place for the last 
twenty years. These poor little things have 
never had any gayety, except the rector’s 
summer treat.” 

“ And they couldn’t have a Christmas-tree 
in the summer, could they?” mused Moppet. 
“ That would be simply silly.” 

Moppet held office on this occasion. She 
was to distribute the presents, assisted by 
the school - master, who would tell her the 
names of the children, and advise her choice. 
There was to be no long-bearded necroman- 
cer this evening. Mr. Danby did not think 
it worth while to disguise himself, remem- 
bering how little notice the genteel children 
had taken of his robe or his beard, and how 
all their thoughts had been centred on the 
tree and the toy-box. These children would 


141 


no doubt be even more stolid and unimpres- 
sionable. 

There they were at tea, solemnly munch- 
ing, solemnly handing in their mugs for more 
of the steaming brew, tea ready milked and 
sugared in a huge urn ; no nice distinctions 
as to sweetness or non-sweetness, no study 
of individual tastes — hot sweet milky tea for 
everybody. The buns were the feature of 
the feast. The piled-up dishes of bright yel- 
low cake were not neglected, but the buns 
were first favorite. Moppet could not have 
believed so many buns could disappear in 
so short a time. It was almost as good 
as seeing a conjurer dispose of live rab- 
bits. The cake-dishes were half full when 
the meal was finished, but not a bun re- 
mained. 

Suddenly there came a darkness, and one 
simultaneous “ Oh ! oh I” arose from the chil- 
dren, while such vulgar words as “ Lawks !” 
and “ Crikey !” floated in the steamy atmos- 
phere. And then the door was opened, and 
the tree was seen, and instantly saluted by a 
tremendous clapping of hands and a thunder 


142 


of hob-nailed boots as the children all trooped 
into the next room. 

Oh, it was a noble tree ! It looked ever 
so much larger here than in the great hall 
at Penlyon Place. The head of the fairy 
on the topmost branch brushed against the 
school-room ceiling as Hie swayed to and fro, 
waving a beneficent wand. 

The crackers were a source of rapture, and 
Tom Smith was the hero of the evening. 
Laddie was in his element, letting off crackers 
all over the school-room with cottage boys 
who had never seen a cracker before, and 
who cried “Crikey!” or “My!” whenever one 
went off. Laddie did not expect another 
toy ; but he was determined to have a good 
go in at the crackers. Lassie, the prim little 
lady, stood close against Adela Haw berk’s 
skirt while these ruder festivities were going 
on, not relishing that odor of corduroy and 
boot leather which is inevitable in such com- 
pany. But Moppet was moving from child 
to child in the friendliest way, handing the 
toys allotted to each, explaining, patronizing, 
altogether mistress of the situation — a Lady 


143 


Bountiful of two feet high, flushed and fever- 
ish with pleasure. 

While the excitement was at its highest 
point, Sir John appeared suddenly in the 
doorway. Moppet flew to him in a moment. 
It seemed as if he always exercised the most 
powerful attraction for that young person. 
She gravitated to him as surely as the apple 
falls to the ground. 

“ Isn’t it lovely ?” she asked him. “ Ain’t 
they happy ? Ain’t their faces red ?” 

“And ain’t yours red, Moppet? Why, 
you are in a high fever. I think you had 
better sit on my shoulder and see the fun, in- 
stead of running about in this black hole of 
Calcutta.” 

Sir John had come out of the sharp even- 
ing air, and the atmosphere of the school- 
room seemed like the heat of an oven. The 
toys were all distributed, the box was empty, 
and all the dolls had been unhooked from 
their perches on the waving green boughs. 
Only the impossible golden fruits and gold 
and silver fish and flags remained, and the 
tapers were expiring in smoke. 


144 


Moppet sat on Sir John’s shoulder survey- 
ing the crowd, each child engrossed in its 
own pleasure, examining its booty. 

“ Now, boys and girls,” said the school- 
master, “three cheers for Sir John Pen- 
lyon !” 

“No, no,” remonstrated Sir John; “I’ve 
nothing to do with the affair.” 

Remonstrance was useless, the loud chorus 
arose about him deafeningly. 

“ And now for Miss Hawberk !” 

More cheering ; loud and shrill, treble and 
bass. 

“ And now for Mr. Danby, who is always 
so kind to you !” 

More and more cheering, much louder, 
much shriller, as from hearts overcharged 
with warmest feelings. 

“ And now for the little girl who gave out 
the toys !” 

Another special cheer — final at least for 
the party from Place, for Sir John turned 
and fled, with Moppet sitting on his shoul- 
der ; but more cheering sounded through the 
winter darkness from the school -house be- 


145 


hind them as they hurried along the frosty 
road through the park. 

“ Oh, what a happy evening it has been !” 
said Moppet from her perch on Sir John’s 
shoulder. 

“And now you are ready for Bedford- 
shire,” said Mr. Danby. 

“No, Uncle Tom. I am not the littlest 
bit sleepy.” 

In spite of this energetic asseveration, Mop- 
pet was discovered to be fast asleep when 
the party arrived at Place, and in that un- 
conscious condition was undressed and put 
to bed, and knew nothing more till next 
morning, when she awoke bright and fresh, 
and greatly astonished that it should be to- 
morrow. 


10 


CHAPTER YII 


There could be no doubt about Moppet’s 
affection for Sir John Penlyon. It was not 
cupboard love. Self-interest had nothing to 
do with it. The child’s young fancies centred 
in the grave elderly man who had so kindly 
and protecting an air when she nestled by 
his side in his roomy arm-chair, or squeezed 
herself close up against him at the breakfast 
or the luncheon table. Sir John would have 
been more or less than human had he not 
been flattered by this preference. She liked 
him better than she liked Danby, yet she had 
known Danby for the whole of her little life, 
and Danby was her slave, would crawl on 
all-fours for her, simulating anything zoolog- 
ical she might choose to order, would carry 
her on his shoulder for a mile on end, and 
studied her small desires in the toy world 
with a reckless disregard of expense. She 


147 


was fond of Danby, but not so fond as she 
was of Sir John. 

“ You’re so very grand,” she explained al- 
ways, patting her new friend on his shoulder. 

She seemed to have a precocious apprecia- 
tion of this personal grandeur, for certainly 
Sir John Penlyon had the grand air which 
impresses society in general. To Moppet’s 
fancy he absorbed into himself all the digni- 
ty of his surroundings, the portly black- 
coated butler, the handsome liveries and 
powdered heads of the footmen, the space 
and splendor of the house, the wide-reaching 
park and grounds, and those farms which 
stretched so far away that Moppet, asking 
ever so many times in a morning walk, “ Are 
all these fields yours ?” had hardly ever been 
answered in the negative. 

“You are like the Marquis of Carabas, 
only it’s all true instead of stories,” said 
Moppet. 

And in her small, half -conscious way Mop- 
pet admired the baronet’s tall, erect figure, 
his handsome features, the gray hair and 
beard, and the strongly -marked black eye- 


148 


brows which gave such character to the 
face. 

Once when some discussion as to personal 
beauty arose, Moppet expressed herself de- 
cisively. 

“You are very pretty,” she told him — 
“ quite the prettiest of us all !” 

“ Would you like to be as pretty when you 
grow up, Moppet ?” lie asked. 

“ Of course not, you silly man. I am go- 
ing to be a young lady, and wear frocks like 
hers,” pointing to Adela’s low bodice. “ How 
funny I should look with a beard like yours !” 

Sir John accepted her flatteries laughingly, 
and owned to Danby that the little hireling 
amused and interested him; but he ques- 
tioned his friend no further as to her belong- 
ings. He seemed content to accept her as a 
waif from afar, who was to vanish out of his 
home as quietly as she had entered there, 
leaving no trace behind. 

“We are to go home on the seventh day 
of the new year,” she informed him gravely 
one morning, in a pause of his letter- writing. 

It was her privilege — obtained by sheer 


149 


persistence — to sit in his room while he wrote 
his letters. She pledged herself to silence 
and stillness, and she would sit upon her has- 
sock in a corner by the fire, playing with her 
dolls for an hour at a time, without a word 
spoken above a whisper, so low that not a 
sound reached him at his writing-table ; but, 
looking at her sometimes, he would see the 
little red lips moving rapidly, and he knew 
that an elaborate make-believe conversa- 
tion was going on between Moppet and her 
dolls. 

“ Will you be glad to go away ?” he asked. 

“ Sorry to go away, but glad to go back 
to mother,” she answered, looking up at him 
with clear, truthful eyes. “Will you be 
sorry when I am gone ?” 

“ I’m afraid I shall, Moppet ; but I shall 
have to get over it. I have had to get over 
worse sorrows than that.” 

One day Adela Hawberk came into the 
drawing-room excitedly, in the quiet quarter 
of an hour before dinner, when the children 
had vanished into the deep silence of Bed- 
fordshire. 


150 


“ Uncle, I have just made a discovery !” she 
exclaimed. 

“ Indeed ! And what may that be ?” 

“ Moppet is the living image of the “ Shrimp 
Girl” — not so pretty, but extraordinarily 
like. 

“ Have you only just found that out ?” 

“ Only five minutes ago, coming through 
the gallery.” 

“ I have seen the likeness for a long time,” 
replied Sir John, quietly, “and I think” — 
with a curious emphasis — “ Danby must have 
observed it also.” 

Mr. Danby blushed, but held his peace, and 
the butler’s announcement of dinner closed 
the conversation. 

The “ Shrimp Girl” was a fancy portrait of 
Sir John Penlyon’s great-aunt Priscilla, by 
Sir Joshua Keynolds, and almost as famous as 
the “ Strawberry Girl ” at Summerley. 

Well-informed people who were shown 
over Place House always made a point of 
asking to see the “ Shrimp Girl.” It was a 
picture that had been written about by art 
critics, and it had been exhibited some win- 


151 


ters ago among the old masters at Burling- 
ton House. 

The little girl was painted sitting on the 
sands, in a reddish - brown frock, with bare 
head and bare feet, a shrimping net in her 
hand, a gypsy hat with blue ribbons lying 
by her side — a pretty rustic picture of a not 
particularly pretty child, in the painter’s 
grandest, boldest, most supremely natural 
manner ; and the little girl looked almost as 
much alive as Moppet herself. 

There was a likeness, undoubtedly. The 
dark gray, deep -set eyes, the overhanging 
forehead and sensitive mouth, the dimples 
and mutinous smile were all suggestive of 
Moppet ; but when the subject was reopened 
by Adela later in the evening, Sir John 
would not allow any discussion about it. 

“All children of the same age and com- 
plexion are alike,” he said, curtly, and Mr. 
Danby plunged into the conversation with 
an entirely new theme. 

There were no more complaints about a 
green Christmas after that evening in the 


152 


school - house. The first fall of snow had 
been the herald of a severer winter than had 
been known in that western extremity of 
England for at least ten years. 

The young people were glad and the old 
people were sorry. For the young there 
were the novel pleasures of skating and 
hockey on the ice ; for the old there was the 
fear, and in many cases the reality, of bron- 
chitis; and fuel was dearer, and life was 
harder by as many degrees as the quicksilver 
sank in the thermometer. 

For one little person in this big busy world 
that wintry season seemed a time of unal- 
loyed delight. Moppet’s little red legs 
trotted over the hard roads and along the 
narrow foot-paths which the gardeners had 
swept in park and gardens, almost always 
trotting beside other and older footsteps, the 
little red woolly hand almost always held in 
the warm grip of Sir John’s buckskin glove, 
age and childhood consorting in a curious 
companionship. 

Together Sir John and his little friend vis- 
ited all the striking features of the neighbor- 


153 


hood. They stood together upon Tintagel’s 
wind-blown height, and watched the silvery 
gulls holding their parliament on the long, 
low lines of smooth dark rock round which 
the spray danced and the emerald - green 
water tumbled so merrily. Moppet loved 
those bold and perilous heights. 

“ I should be afraid if I was here quite alone, 
or even with Miss Hawberk,” she explained ; 
“ but I’m not a bit afraid with you,” and in- 
deed the tenderest and most experienced of 
nurses could not have been more careful of 
a tiny charge than was Sir John Penlyon. 

“ Did you ever have any little girls of your 
own ?” Moppet asked him one day. 

“ Yes, Moppet, once upon a time.” 

“ And did you love them veway, veway, 
veway much,” with intense emphasis — “ ever 
so much better than you love me ?” 

“ Love cannot be measured off-hand, Mop- 
pet. It is a long time since I had any little 
girls of my own.” 

“ I am veway glad of that,” said Moppet ; 
and Sir John was glad that she asked no 
further questions. 


154 


He took her to Pentargain Bay, to see the 
seals, and would have been very pleased to 
show her those creatures had there been any 
on view ; but as there were none visible to 
the naked eye, he could only tell her about 
the ways and habits of the seal tribe ; and 
he took her down to the beach and prowled 
about with her between the caves and the sea, 
and she was full of interest and excitement. 

Playing quietly in the library next morn- 
ing Avhile Sir John wrote his letters, he saw 
that she had made a kind of tent of Whit- 
aker's Almanack , and had put three or four 
old gold seals — giant seals of the eighteenth 
century — in this tent, and was contemplating 
them with evident satisfaction. 

“ What new game is that, Moppet ?” he 
asked. 

“ I am playing at seals.’’ 

“ But those seals are not a bit like the ani- 
mals I told you about yesterday.” 

“ I know that, only I can make believe they 
are nice, soft, hairy animals, with funny blunt 
noses, living on land and in water. They are 
seals, you know.” 


155 


“That is a tremendous stretch for your 
small imagination.” 

Small imagination, quotha! The dark, 
deep - set eyes gazing up at him indicated a 
power of imagination rare even among men 
and women. 

The ice on the pond in the park was pro- 
nounced to be in perfect condition one bright 
morning, and Adela Hawberk gave herself 
up to the delight of skating with a little party 
of genteel youths from the neighborhood. 
It was an ice carnival in a small way. Hot 
drinks and other refreshments were sent from 
Place House. The villagers came to look on. 
Mr. Danby was in his glory cutting figures 
upon the ice and taking care of the children, 
who had a slide in a corner, upon which they 
slid and tumbled untiringly, with much noise 
of shrill voices and happy laughter. It was 
nearly dark when they all went back to the 
house, Moppet upon Danby’s shoulder. There 
was only time for a very noisy tea, at which 
Moppet’s excitement and conversational pow- 
ers were tremendous — before the journey to 
Bedfordshire. 


156 


“ I hope the sea will be frozen by the time 
we go back to mother,” said Moppet, as she 
was carried off. 

Laddie and Lassie went back to the pond 
next day with Miss Hawberk, but Moppet 
was reported to have a cold, and was kept 
in-doors. She did not rebel against this de- 
cree, but was quite contented to sit on her 
hassock in her favorite corner by Sir John’s 
fireside, with her dolls and Christmas toys 
spread about her on the hearth-rug. 

Looking up now and then from his letters, 
Sir John saw that she was not as busy with 
her dolls as usual. She sat very quietly, with 
her head leaning against the marble column 
of the chimney-piece, and one of her dolls ly- 
ing in her lap. 

“ I’m afraid my Moppet is not very well 
to-day,” he said. 

“Oh yes, I’m very well, but I’ve got a 
little cold. People don’t take powders for 
colds,” she added, hastily ; “ they only stay in- 
doors and keep themselves warm. I am ve- 
way warm, thank you,” and she screwed her- 
self still closer into her snug corner by the 


157 


fire, and he saw her eyelids droop heavily 
over the tired eyes. 

Certainly Moppet was not quite herself to- 
day. Her eyes were heavy, and her voice was 
thick ; but everybody knows that these are 
the common symptoms of the common cold. 
Sir John would not allow himself to be un- 
easy about an every-day childish ailment. 

When the luncheon-gong sounded she told 
him she did not want any dinner, and would 
rather stay where she was. He compromised 
the matter by ordering a tray to be brought, 
and the old house-maid, Sarah, appeared with 
roast mutton and rice-pudding, and tried her 
best to coax the child to eat; but Moppet 
stuck to her text. 

“ Ho, thank you, Sarah ; Pm sure it’s very 
nice, but I’d rather not have any of it till to- 
morrow,” she said. 

The day wore on to evening, the premature 
evening of those dark days after Christmas, 
and still Moppet sat in the corner fast asleep. 
Sir John had taken the velvet pillows from 
his sofa, and had made a luxurious little 
nest for the child in the angle of the project- 


158 


ing chimney-piece — a warm nook, where the 
fire-glow could not scorch her face. Here 
she slept — breathing very heavily — till Mr. 
Danby came to look for her at afternoon tea- 
time. 

The footman came in with a lamp imme- 
diately after him, and Sir John started up 
from his forty winks in his big arm-chair on 
the opposite side of the hearth. He had been 
giving himself a holiday in the dusk of even- 
ing. 

“Come, Moppet,” said Mr. Danby, kneel- 
ing down beside the child. “Aren’t you 
ready for tea % Why, what a cosey little bed 
you have made for yourself, and what a lazy 
little puss you are !” 

The eyelids were lifted languidly, the dark 
gray eyes looked at him wearily, as if they 
hardly recognized the familiar face. 

“ I don’t want any tea,” said the small voice, 
piteously. “ I want to stay here. Please go 
and take care of the others.” 

She coughed with a short, dry cough that 
alarmed Mr. Danby’s ear. He knew much 
more about children and their ailments than 


159 


Sir John Penlyon, old bachelor though he 
was. 

“I’m afraid my Moppet is ill,” he said, 
gravely, lifting the weary little figure into a 
chair opposite Sir John’s, where the lamp- 
light shone full upon flushed cheeks and swol- 
len eyelids. 

He felt the little wrist. Alas ! the pulse 
was galloping faster than any horse in Sir 
John’s stables had ever galloped — galloping 
on the road that leads to wild fancies and 
strange delusions, and all the terrors of fever. 

“ Good God !” cried Sir John, bending over 
Moppet, and thoroughly scared by this time, 
“ the child’s forehead is burning.” 

He felt the little languid hands ; they, too, 
were scorched with fever. 

“ It’s nothing veway bad,” explained Mop- 
pet. “ I’ve often been feverish before.” 

But the little choking cough which inter- 
rupted even this short speech, the quick, pant- 
ing breath, and the vivid crimson flush gain- 
said Moppet’s reassuring words. 

Mr. Danby took her up in his arms. 

“ She must go to bed this instant,” he said. 


160 


“ You’d better send off at once for tlie doctor, 
Jack. I’m very sorry to have brought this 
trouble upon you.” 

“ I’m very sorry the child should be ill,” 
said Sir John, ringing the bell furiously. 

“Please don’t be unhappy about me,” 
gasped Moppet, as she was carried off, look- 
ing back at Sir John from the threshold, and 
waving a hot little hand in affectionate leave- 
taking. “ I’m not going to be veway bad — 
children are so soon up and down, you know ; 
but I’m afraid I shall have to be poulticed.” 

Poultices were the word. Before midnight 
the whole household was concerned about 
Moppet’s poultices. The doctor had been at 
Place three times since tea-time, and a nurse 
had been telegraphed for and was to arrive 
from Plymouth next morning; for Moppet 
was down with acute congestion of the lungs, 
and as the evening darkened into night, the 
symptomatic fever began its dreary effect 
upon the childish brain, and Moppet’s wits 
were wandering in strange places, and strange 
visions were passing before those shining 
glassy eyes, which seemed to see nothing of 


161 


the real people about her bed — the serious up- 
per house-maid, who put on the poultices, or 
Adela Hawberk, always ready with lemonade 
for the thirsty lips, or the doctor, bending 
gravely down to listen to the laborious move- 
ment of the chest, or to take the patient’s 
temperature. 

Little French phrases dropped from the 
dry lips now and then, and it was clear that 
the child fancied herself in France again. 
And very often there were appealing cries to 
mother, which smote Sir John’s heart with 
intolerable pain, as he stood just inside the 
door of the spacious bedroom, hidden from 
Moppet by the tall four-leaved screen which 
sheltered the bed from the hazard of draughts. 

The little life was trembling in the balance, 
he told himself, though the doctor had sound- 
ed no note of alarm — had, indeed, been quite 
cheerful about his small patient. 

“ It’s rather a sharp attack,” he told Sir 
John. “ But children generally take kindly 
to congestion of the lungs.” 

“This child is so fragile — ” 

“ Fragile ! FTot a bit of it,” interrupted Mr. 
n 


162 


Nicholls. “ Wiry, not fragile. There’s a great 
deal of brain — rather too much brain, perhaps. 
The dull child has always a better chance than 
the clever child. But I hope this one will do 
very well. It’s all a question of nursing. The 
trained nurse will be here to-morrow morn- 
ing, and in the meantime all my instructions 
are being carried out by Miss Hawberk and 
the maid.” 

They were thus distinctly assured that 
there was no danger ; yet nobody at Penlyon 
seemed inclined to go to bed that night. One 
o’clock struck with the sound of ghostly 
solemnity which belongs only to the single 
solitary stroke of the first hour after mid- 
night; two o’clock struck, and Sir John 
and Mr. Danby sat reading by the drawing- 
room fire, pretending not to know how late 
it was. 

At half -past two Adela came fluttering in 
to tell them that Moppet was asleep; very 
feverish still, and still with short and painful 
breath, but sleeping. That was in itself cause 
for rejoicing. 

After this hopeful news Sir John discov- 


168 


ered the lateness of the hour, and he and Mr. 
Danby bade each other good-night. 

“ I’m very sorry the child is ill, for your 
sake, Danby,” he said. “ I know how fond 
you are of her.” 

“ Yes, I could not be fonder of her, and it 
may be my fault that she is ill. I hate my- 
self for having kept her so long in that east 
wind ; but she was so happy, she was enjoy- 
ing herself so- thoroughly. I never dreamt of 
danger.” 

“ Don’t talk of danger ; Hicholls says she 
will be better to-morrow, and if she isn’t bet- 
ter we’ll get some great man from London. 
But I have faith in our Boscastle doctor. He 
has a great deal of experience and plenty of 
sound common -sense, and he has no anti- 
quated notions. But we’ll telegraph for a 
physician to - morrow morning, even though 
the child be better. We won’t waste time,” 
added Sir John, uneasily. 

It was wonderful to see him so strongly 
moved by the waif’s illness — he who was 
supposed to have outlived every gentle emo- 
tion. 


164 


He sent his telegram by a mounted mes- 
senger before seven o’clock, a telegram ad- 
dressed to Dr. South, the famous children’s 
doctor, entreating him to travel by the ex- 
press from Waterloo, which would arrive at 
Launceston before six o’clock. A carriage 
would be waiting for him at the station to 
bring him over the moor to Penlyon. 

“We’ll have the highest authority,” Sir 
John said to Mr. Danby, who came into his 
room just as the servant carried off the mes- 
sage. “We must not have to reproach our- 
selves with neglect, if — ” 

He did not finish the sentence, but bent 
over his writing-table to arrange the papers 
which he had thrust aside when he wrote 
his telegram. 

It was not seven o’clock yet, and the master 
of Penlyon Place was in his dressing-gown. 
His valet would not come to him till eight ; 
but sleep had been impossible, and the only 
relief was in moving about his room by the 
ghastly morning candlelight, while Danby, 
who was fully dressed, stood looking at him. 

“Danby,” cried Sir John, presently, stop- 


165 


ping in his slow pacing up and down, “you 
look as if you hadn’t been in bed all 
night !” 

“ I haven’t — much.” 

“ Danby, you’re a fool— a fidgety old fool. 
You heard what Mcholls said about children 
— they generally take kindly to congestion 
of the lungs.” 

“ Yes, I heard him — and I have heard her 
breathing. One might take kindly to a wolf 
sitting on one’s chest, but one would rather 
not have him there. Take kindly l That’s 
a doctor’s phrase for struggling through a 
painful malady. The child survives where 
the adult might succumb ; but in the mean- 
time there’s acute suffering to be borne some- 
how. And Moppet is so patient ! One feels 
angry with Providence — for punishing — such 
a — little creature.” 

Mr. Danby escaped hurriedly from the 
room, but Sir John heard something like a 
sob before the door shut behind him. 

“ What fools we are,” he muttered. “ All 
this fuss and anxiety about a child, when all 
the London slums are choked with children 


whose future maintenance is problematical. 
One child less or more upon this teeming 
earth ! What difference ought that to make ? 
A creature that has only just begun to think 
and to feel ! Why, less than five years ago 
there was no such thing as Moppet ; and now 
I believe Danby thinks the world would be 
empty without her.” 

Danby ! Was it only Mr. Danby who was 
so foolishly anxious about that little life 
struggling with illness? Who was it who 
walked up and down the terrace in the early 
morning, watching for the coming of the 
doctor ? Who was it who followed the doc- 
tor to the door of the sick-room, and waited 
outside in the corridor till he came out again 
— waited with aching heart and a sick dread 
of hearing bad news ? 

The news was bad. Mr. Nicholls found 
Moppet worse to-day than yesterday. 

“If you would like a second opinion — ” 
he began. 

“I have telegraphed for Dr. South,” Sir 
John answered, curtly, “and have had his 
reply. He will be here this evening.” 











* 























- H 




- 























































167 


“Of course I can have no objection to 
meet a man of Dr. South’s distinction.” 

Objection ! As if this country doctor’s 
feelings, and the petty restrictions of med- 
ical etiquette, were to be studied when that 
little life was wavering in the balance — 
weighed in a balance so fine that a hair 
might turn it. 

Oh, that long, dreadful day of waiting and 
suspense ! Mr. Hicholls came many times in 
the day ; indeed, he only drove hither and 
thither on hurried journeys to see his other 
patients, and then came back to Penlyon 
Place, making that his headquarters. The 
child showed no signs of improvement as the 
day wore on. There was a hush through- 
out the house, almost as if death were al- 
ready there ; while Danby and Adela went 
about with pale faces, too restless and anx- 
ious for settled occupation of any kind. 
Their talk was all of the child, and of differ- 
ent cases of childish illness out of which the 
patient had come triumphantly. If they had 
ever known of fatal cases they did not men- 
tion those. 


168 


And all through the sunny morning and 
the short afternoon Laddie and Lassie were 
at play on a little lawn in front of the library, 
and a long way from the sick child’s room, 
a spot whence no sound of those shrill young 
voices could reach her. They had one of the 
women servants to look after them, and to 
see that they did not catch cold ; and they 
had their shuttlecocks ,and battledoors, and 
bats and balls and hoops, from their treasury 
of Christmas gifts, and were as full of life 
and spirits as if there were no such thing 
as suffering in the world. Sir John almost 
hated these small egotists, flushed and happy 
under the cloudless blue of a bright winter 
sky, Lassie skimming across the little lawn 
like a scarlet bird, Laddie skipping and 
bounding about like a boy on wires, never 
still. 

Sir John looked so worried when they ap- 
proached him that Mr. Danby, quick to read 
all his old friend’s feelings, ordered their ear- 
ly dinner in the house-keeper’s room instead 
of at the family luncheon-table. They were 
treated all through the day almost as if they 


169 


were in disgrace, and nobody took any notice 
of them. Towards evening they grew frac- 
tions and fretful, and began to feel really 
sorry that Moppet was ill, or that things in 
general had become uncomfortable. 

“I should like to go home to mother,” 
said Lassie. 

“So should I,” agreed Laddie. “It’s no 
fun being here when there’s only servants 
to play with.” 

“We sha’n’t have such nice dinners when 
we go home,” mused the girl. “We shall 
have rice-puddings some days, and potato- 
soup some days ; but not always fowls and 
tarts and cream and junket, like we do 
here.” 

“ Who cares ?” cried the boy, with a dash 
of defiance. 

“ You care — very much !” retorted his sis- 
ter, with vigorous assertion. “ It’s a story 
to say you don’t. You know you’re much 
the greediest of us. You quite love your 
dinner.” 

“ So do you ! So does everybody that 
is hungry — everybody except mother. She 


170 


never cares. She likes us to have all the 
nice things, and pretends she doesn’t want 
any.” 

And so, squabbling, but not unfriendly, 
and talking to each other through the open 
door between the two rooms, Laddie and 
Lassie dropped asleep, and their brief day 
was done ; while to those elders below stairs, 
who waited for the London physician, it 
seemed hardly evening. 

Sir John sat in the library, just where he 
had sat when the notion of the Christmas 
hirelings was first mooted, with the monthly 
time-table of the L. & S. W. R. open on his 
knee. He had looked at it a dozen times 
within the last hour to see how soon Dr. 
South could arrive. 

It was night when there came that thrill- 
ing sound of carriage- wheels — thrilling when 
every nerve is strained in expectation of 
some particular guest — and Sir John went 
out to the hall to receive the doctor. Then 
came the examination of the patient, and 
then the consultation within closed doors. 

How long, how infinitely long it seemed 


171 


to those who waited! Danby, Adela, and 
Sir John were in the drawing-room, having 
given up the library to the doctors. They 
sat with the door wide open, listening for the 
opening of that other door, which should an- 
nounce the end of the consultation. It would 
be like the entrance of the jury after a trial 
for life and death. They were waiting for 
the verdict — waiting to know whether Mop- 
pet was to die. 

At last the door opened, with the sonorous 
sound of a massive oaken door two hundred 
years old, and the two doctors came across, 
to the drawing-room where Sir John stood 
waiting for them on the threshold. 

“Well?” he asked. 

Dr. South gave a faint sigh before he an- 
swered that monosyllabic question. 

“ The child is gravely ill,” he said. “ We 
are going to do all that can be done. Mr. 
Nicholls thoroughly understands the case. 
There has been no time lost, no measure 
omitted. But I cannot disguise the fact 
from you — the child is gravely ill.” 

“Mr. Nicholls told us that children gen- 


172 


erally take kindly to inflammation of the 
lungs.” 

“ The generality of children. But this is 
a peculiar child — a child of a very excitable 
temperament, with a preponderancy of brain. 
The mind here tells against the body. Every- 
thing will be done, but — ” 

“ There is danger !” interrupted Sir John. 

“ Yes, there is danger. I should do very 
wrong not to admit that. Has the child no 
mother ?” 

Hot for a moment did the physician mis- 
take Adela Hawberk for the child’s mother, 
though Adela might have been taken for 
any age between twenty and twenty- five, 
and thus might seem quite old enough to be 
the mother of Moppet. The doctor’s keen 
eye saw at a single glance that this pretty 
young lady in the evening frock was not the 
sick child's mother. She was anxious and 
tearful and sympathetic ; but the white de- 
spair, the agony of suspense and terror — that 
look of the wild animal at bay, and ready to 
fight for the menaced life of her young, which 
he knew in the mother’s eye, was lacking 


173 


here. This pretty young lady was bound by 
no such close tie as motherhood to the little 
creature struggling for breath in the room 
above. 

“ The little girl’s mother is living,” an- 
swered Mr. Danby. “ Ought she to be sent 
for ?” 

“ Undoubtedly. I hope she is not very far 
off.” 

That last sentence sounded like Moppet’s 
death-warrant. 

“ She is in London.” 

“ I thought she was in France,” muttered 
Sir John, with a curious, downcast look. 

“ I hope she is in London by this time. I 
telegraphed to her yesterday. I told her the 
child was ill — but not dangerously ill — and 
that she had better come as far as Plymouth, 
in case of any change for the worse.” 

“ Shall you know where to find her in 
Plymouth ?” asked Dr. South. 

“ Yes ; she will expect a telegram at the 
Post-office.” 

“ Good. Then get your message de- 
spatched as soon as you can.” 


174 


“ It’s a pity you didn’t tell her to come 
straight here,” said Sir John. 

Mr. Danby accepted the reproof in si- 
lence. Sir John led the way to the dining- 
room, where dinner was waiting for the 
traveller from London and the household 
doctor. 

Dr. South was to spend the night at Pen- 
lyon, and was to be driven to Launceston 
next morning in time for the earliest train. 
There would doubtless be a change in the 
patient by the morning, either for better or 
worse. If the change were for worse, it 
would most likely be the last change of all, 
and the mother would arrive too late to 
clasp her living child even in a last despair- 
ing embrace. 

“ Danby!” exclaimed Sir John, severely, 
when he and his old friend had gone back 
to the library, “ in God’s name why did not 
you tell the mother to come straight through 
as fast as rail and coach could bring her ?” 

“ I did not like — ” faltered Danby. “ I had 
no right to summon her to this house with- 
out your permission.” 


175 


“ You might have asked my permission.’ ’ 

“ No, no, no !” exclaimed Danby, agitated- 
ly. “ I wanted it to be spontaneous. I could 
not introduce the subject — ” 

“ Pshaw ! what matters it to me who 
comes or goes while that child is lying at 
death’s door?” cried Sir John, fiercely. “I 
should not see — the person. It is of the 
child I think — the child only. She was 
calling her mother to-day when I was in the 
room — so sweet, so loving, so sensible. She 
kissed me again and again with her feverish 
lips as I bent over her bed.* She knew me 
perfectly. Yet there was a touch of delirium ; 
and she called to her mother as if she were 
in the room. That made my heart ache, 
Danby.” 

“Well, the mother will be here to-morrow, 
I hope. I telegraphed to her yesterday. 
After Nicholls had seen the child for the 
second time, I fancied he was a little uneasy 
about her, though he wouldn’t own it. So I 
just walked into Boscastle and telegraphed 
to — the mother. She would be quick to 
take alarm, I dare say — though I only told 


176 


her that her youngest was laid up with a 
severe cold, and she could come to Plymouth 
if she felt anxious, so as to be within easy 
reach. I had a reply a few hours after to 
say she was leaving for Folkestone by the 
night boat. She is at Plymouth by this 
time, I have no doubt.” 

“ Folkestone !” muttered Sir John. “ Then 
the place those children talk about is Bou- 
logne.” 

“ Yes, it is Boulogne — a very good place, 
too, for a widow with a small family. They 
can live as cheaply there as anywhere, and 
in fine fresh air.” 

Sir John made no comment upon this, but 
sat absorbed and silent by the neglected fire, 
and then rose restlessly, walked about the 
room, took a book from the shelves, taking 
pains to find a particular volume, opened, 
glanced at it, and threw it aside. His face 
had a look of listening, and often in his 
pacing to and fro he stopped to open the 
door, and stood for a few moments holding 
it ajar, as if waiting for some one. 

They had moved Moppet to one of the 


m 


principal bedrooms at the top of the grand 
staircase, the spacious chamber in which the 
most important guests had been always in- 
stalled when there was a house -party at 
Penlyon. This state-room had been aired 
and warmed and prepared in hot haste for 
the tiny visitor, when it was found that 
Moppet’s bad cold was going to be a serious 
illness. It was chosen as the largest, airiest 
room in the large airy house, and Mr.Nicholls 
highly approved the arrangement, though he 
had not advised it. Laddie and Lassie had 
their two rooms all to themselves, and — 
light-hearted and forgetful as they were 
in their morning play — in the silence and 
solitude of the after-bedtime affection pre- 
vailed over egotism, and Lassie and Laddie 
each shed a few tears for their missing sister. 

“Do you think she’ll be quite well to- 
morrow?” questioned Lassie, sitting up in 
bed, and calling to her unseen brother in 
the adjoining room. 

“I’m afraid not. Sarah says she’s very 
bad, and that when Sarah’s little niece had 
the same complaint she died ; but then 
12 


178 


Sarah’s little niece had a neglectful mother, 
Sarah says.” 

“ Moppet has no mother at all now,” said 
Lassie, dolefully. “ Oh, I wish mother was 
here. I wish we were all at home. I don’t 
want Moppet to die. What will mother do 
if Moppet dies, and she has only us ?” 

“ She’d be very miserable with only us,” 
replied Laddie, with a voice that was muffled 
by distance and bedclothes, and perhaps a 
little by sleepiness. “ We’re so big, and 
mother’s so fond of little children.” 

“ We must be very, very, very good, and 
very, very, very kind to mother if Moppet 
should die,” Lassie said, conclusively. And 
then after a pause she inquired, “ Should we 
have to go into mourning ?” 

“ You would, of course, because you’re a 
girl. But I shouldn’t. There’s no such thing 
as boy’s mourning, stupid,” replied Laddie, 
awakened by what he considered a futile 
question. “ Fancy a boy playing foot-ball in 
mourning — or cricket? But Moppet isn’t 
going to die. There’s a doctor from London 
come to cure her. Sarah said his — what is 


179 


it they give doctors?” questioned Laddie, 
suddenly at fault — “ his free — that’s it ! 
Sarah said his free would be two hundred 
guineas — down on the nail. I heard her 
tell the other house-maid so.” 

“What does down on the nail mean?” 
asked Lassie, more interested in that mys- 
terious phase than in the coming of the 
medical Alcides. 

Unable to explain, and really sleepy, Lad- 
die pretended to be actually asleep. He 
threw a little extra power into his breathing, 
and the imitation soon became reality. 

The night wore on — another night on 
which people pretended to forget the hour, 
and no one thought of going to bed. It was 
felt that Dr. South’s presence in the house 
was a tower of strength, a rock of defence 
against the Great Enemy. Indeed, Sir John 
had reason to think so, when, stealing with 
cautious foot-fall to Moppet’s room in the 
dead of night, he saw the physician sitting 
at the bottom of the bed, watching for the 
result of his treatment. 

Dr. South came down to the drawing-room 


180 


half an hour afterwards, and found Sir John 
and his friend sitting forlornly, far apart, like 
people who had nothing to say to each other. 
It was between three and four o’clock. The 
clusters of candles on the mantel-piece had 
burned down to the sockets, and one of the 
lamps had gone out. Adela had been sent 
off to bed an hour before, very reluctant to 
go, and, indeed, had been met by the doctor 
in the corridor, in her dressing-gown, hang- 
ing about for news of the child. 

“ Oh, Dr. South, you don’t think she’s go- 
ing to die, do you ?” she asked, piteously. 

“ I think we’re trying very hard to save 
her, my dear young lady, and with God’s 
help we may prevail,” answered the doctor, 
gravely ; and with this assurance Adela was 
fain to be content. 

Those clinging arms, and the showers of 
kisses that were like the bubbling up of 
childish love from a deep fountain of tender- 
ness, those bright eyes and dimpling smiles, 
had endeared the little hireling to the light- 
hearted young woman as well as to the 
worn-out elderly man. 


181 


The night wore on. It was five o’clock 
before the doctor would go to the room that 
had been prepared for him, and where the 
fire had been made up again and again by 
the house-maid, who sat up all night to wait 
upon the sick-room. Mr. Danby had to re- 
mind him of his long journey to-morrow — 
actually to-day — after his long journey of 
to-day — actually yesterday; but Dr. South 
made light of the matter. He could always 
sleep in the train. He made his final visit 
to Moppet’s bedside at five, and went to bed, 
leaving instructions that he should be called 
instantly if there were any change for the 
worse. 

This night — with the knowledge of dan- 
ger staring them full in the face — neither 
Sir John nor Danby went to bed at all. 

“ Danby,” Sir John said, vehemently, stop- 
ping suddenly in front of the despondent 
figure seated far away from the neglect- 
ed fire, “ you had no right to do this 
thing.” 

“ What thing ?” Danby asked, looking up 
at him confusedly. 


182 


“You had no right to bring that little child 
here — and let me love her — let her grow 
into an old man’s heart. Think what sorrow 
you have made for me — a sorrow at the 
end of my life — if she is to die.” 

“She sha’n’t die!” cried Danby. “We’re 
making a good fight of it, anyhow. I tell 
you she sha’n’t die,” he repeated, huskily. 
“ I’m going upstairs now — just to listen at 
her door — I won’t go in. I won’t risk wak- 
ing her with the opening of the door. But I 
may hear something. The nurse may be 
stirring, or the maids may be in the corridor. 
It is agonizing to sit here, and not know if 
things are going well or ill.” 

Mr. Danby went out like a ghost, and Sir 
John waited in the hall while his slow, soft 
steps ascended the stairs. He came down 
again in about a quarter of an hour. He 
had seen one of the maids, who told him 
Moppet was a little less restless than she 
had been earlier in the night. 

He and Sir John made the most of this 
news, and at the first glimmer of the gray, 
cold day they both went to their dressing- 


183 


rooms to make bath and toilet do instead of 
sleep. 

Breakfast was to be at half-past eight for 
Dr. South, who was to leave Penlyon at nine. 
Sir John met Lassie on his way to the break- 
fast-room, very neat and prim in her warm 
serge frock — quite the elder sister. Lassie 
was to be six in May, a fact of which she 
informed people gravely, as if she were com- 
ing into a fortune at that date. Six years 
old. It is not every little girl who is soon 
going to be six. Poor little things who are 
only four look towards that dignified age 
across a desert of intervening years. Lassie 
had learned to tie her petticoat strings, and 
put on her stockings, and even to button her 
boots, in anticipation of her approaching 
dignity. 

“ Mother says I must be very useful when 
I am six,” she told her friends. 

Lassie ran to Sir John and put her hand 
into his, looking up at him piteously. 

“ Mayn’t we have breakfast with you, as 
we used to before Moppet was ill?” she 
asked. “ Please don’t send Laddie and me 


184 


to the house-keeper’s room. We haven’t been 
naughty, have we, Sir John?” 

“No, no, my dear. You and Laddie are 
very good children — only — ” 

He stopped with a troubled air, looking 
down at the small face that looked so im- 
ploringly up at his, as if he were Providence 
personified. 

He could not tell her that, while Moppet’s 
little life trembled in the balance, she and 
her brother were almost hateful to him. If 
Moppet were to die he would prefer the 
world to be altogether empty of children. 

The voices and the faces of children would 
torture him with bitterest memories and re- 
grets. 

“ You may come to breakfast with us, 
Lassie ; but you and your brother must be 
very quiet. We are all of us anxious, and a 
little unhappy about your sister.” 

“ But she will get well, won’t she ?” Lassie 
asked, with a touch of distress. 

“ We hope so, my dear.” 

Laddie was skipping about in front of the 
great hall window, keenly interested in a 


185 


solitary fly that was buzzing drowsily and 
knocking itself feebly against the glass. 
Laddie came bounding across to Sir John 
presently, and said : 

“ Please, mayn’t we have breakfast with 
you, we had no cream yesterday morning, 
how’s Moppet ?” all in a breath. 

Sir John frowned upon him darkly and 
did not answer ; but Laddie, seeing his sister 
go to the breakfast-room hand in hand with 
their host, skipped airily after them, asking 
no further questions. Adela came down 
early in her very plainest tailor-made gown, 
but with her hair dressed as elaborately as 
usual. Harrop, the maid, would hardly have 
neglected that beautiful auburn hair in the 
midst of direst calamity. Laddie and Lassie 
nestled on either side of the young lady, and 
soon began to prattle to her, and to each 
other across her, in low voices which grew 
louder by degrees. 

“If you talk so loud you will be sent 
away,” Adela murmured, warningly. 

“But why mustn’t we talk ? Moppet can’t 
hear us upstairs in that big, big room. It’s 


186 


like being in church. Is it always like this 
when people are ill ?” interrogated Laddie. 

“When people are feeling unhappy they 
like to be very quiet.” 

“ People who are unhappy don’t like any- 
thing. Unhappiness is disliking,” argued the 
boy, with the air of an infant Socrates. 

“ Are you unhappy ?” asked Lassie. 

“ I am very anxious.” 

“Then you think she will die?” urged 
Lassie, searchingly. 

“ Ho, no, no. You must not say such 
things. Pray be quiet, children. Dr. South 
is just going.” 

There was a little movement and talk, and 
a quiet leave-taking. Sir John and Mr. 
Dan by both went to the hall door to see the 
physician drive away. He had done or ad- 
vised all that science could do for the little 
girl who was fighting so bitter a battle, and 
he left them not utterly hopeless. 

“The outlook is brighter to-day than it 
was last night,” he said, finally; “but I 
mustn’t promise too much. We are not out 
of the wood yet. Please let me have an oc- 


187 


casional telegram to say how she is going on. 
She is a dear little child — a most winning 
little child. I have seen the loveliest chil- 
dren who did not interest me half so much 
as that quaint little face of hers, with the 
large forehead and the dark, deep-set eyes. I 
hope her mother will be here to-day.’’ 

Sir John did not respond to that last 
speech, and Dr. South stepped into the use- 
ful station brougham and was driven away 
by the useful upstanding horses. It is a good 
day’s work for any pair of horses to post 
from Penlyon Place to Launceston and back 
again. 

The day wore on towards evening without 
any marked change in the sick-room. Mop- 
pet was living and suffering ; and Dr. Mch- 
olls and the nurse were carrying out Dr. 
South’s thoughtful treatment with the ut- 
most care. All that science and forethought 
could do for the child was being done, as 
Mr. Danby remarked at least a dozen times 
in the course of the day. 

He was walking with Sir John on the 


188 ' 


terrace early in the afternoon when the 
carriage that had taken Dr. South to Laun- 
ceston drove up to the hall door. The coach- 
man had been ordered to watch the arrival 
of trains for a strange lady who was to come 
from Plymouth, and to bring that strange 
lady to Place. Mr. Danby had given the 
man his instructions as to the style and ap- 
pearance of the lady for whom he was to 
look out. 

The bell rang, the carriage door was 
opened, and a lady alighted — a tall, slim 
figure in a long, dark cloak, a pale face 
under a neat little hat. 

Mr. Danby stood hesitatingly as she went 
quickly up the steps, he and Sir John being 
distant from the door by about twenty 
yards. 

“Aren’t you going to her?” asked Sir 
John, sternly. 

“ I — yes— of course — yes. But won’t you 
see her — before she goes to the child ?” 

“ See her ? No !” with his darkest frown. 
“Why should I see her? She comes here 
to see her child — for that and for that alone. 


189 


Go and look after her, Danby. You must 
consider her your guest.” 

Danby gave him a distressed look, and 
was hurrying off, when he stopped suddenly 
and went back to Sir John, fumbling in his 
waistcoat-pocket as he drew near. 

“ Stay,” he said, agitatedly, “ there is 
something I ought to have thought of be- 
fore that lady entered your house,” taking a 
folded paper out of his letter-case. “Your 
check. There it is, and it has never left 
my pocket since you gave it to me. The 
hiring was a fiction — I wanted you to know 
those children — and I planned the thing on 
the spur of the moment.” 

“ You wanted to break my heart,” said Sir 
John, “and it’s quite likely that you will 
realize your wish.” 

“ No, no. I wanted to prove to you that 
you have a heart.” 

“ Go and look after your friend !” 

Mr. Danby went one way, Sir John the 
other, and the check to bearer for one hun- 
dred guineas was torn up and scattered upon 
the thin, cold air. 


190 


Deep and deeper into the heart of the 
Park, where the wind-blown oaks all leaned 
away from the west, went Sir John Penlyon, 
full of grief and anger — grief for the child 
who might die, anger against the friend who 
had brought her there. 

“The meddling, officious fool! I was 
happy enough. I had got over the wrench 
that I felt when that shameless girl diso- 
beyed me. My life was barren, but it was 
peaceful. What more did I want ?” 

What did he want now ? Only the little 
clinging arms round his neck, the soft little 
cheek pressed against his own, the silvery 
little voice prattling gayly to him — inquir- 
ing, philosophizing, laying down the law, as 
if the four-year life were full to the brim of 
wisdom and experience. He wanted Mop- 
pet. He cared nothing for the tall young 
woman whom he had seen pass hurriedly un- 
der that dignified portal which she was never 
to have passed again. His affection had con- 
centrated itself upon this morsel of humanity, 
brought into his house by a trick — a ridicu- 
lous trick of this interfering wretch Danby. 


191 


Moppet’s mother was sitting by her bed- 
side. Moppet was better already. Only 
the sight of the familiar face, only the touch 
of the motherly hands, had done her good. 
This was the account which Adela gave Sir 
John when he went back to the house after 
dark. 

“ The mother seems quite a nice person,” 
said Adela. “ She has very sweet manners, 
and must have been very pretty, but of 
course her every thought is devoted to that 
dear little thing. There has been no time 
for talk of any kind. She won’t come down 
to dinner. Mr. Danby has arranged that 
she shall have the dressing-room open- 
ing out of Moppet’s room to sit in, and 
the, bedroom next to Moppet’s to sleep 
in. We sha’n’t see her down here yet 
awhile.” 

“ So much the better,” said her uncle, 
curtly. 

“ Oh, I can quite understand what a bore 
it must be to you to have a perfect stranger 
brought into your house,” said Adela, with a 
sympathetic air. 


192 


The days wore on, and Sir John saw 
nothing of the stranger. Nor did he see 
Moppet. Mr. Nicholls advised that the child 
should be kept as quiet as possible. There 
should be no one in her room but her 
mother and the nurse. The sensitive brain 
needed repose, after the long nights of fever 
and delirium. Moppet was improving ; that 
was the grand point. “We have turned the 
corner,” Mr. Nicholls announced, delight- 
edly, on the third day after the mother’s 
arrival. “ We have fought a hard fight, and 
we are going to win.” 

The upstairs maid -servants were almost 
hysterical with gladness when the news was 
passed along the corridor and in and out of 
the rooms where neat house-maids in pink 
cotton frocks were sweeping and bed-making. 
Mr. Danby went about the house with a 
step as light as Mercury’s, and everybody 
began to be kind to Laddie and Lassie, who 
had suffered a season of snubbing, and had 
been made to feel that nobody wanted them ; 
except just in that ten minutes at bedtime 
when their mother came to their room and 


193 


heard them say their prayers, and hung 
over their beds with innumerable good-night 
kisses. 

“ May we go and see Moppet ? May we 
play with her again ?” asked Lassie. 

“ Not quite yet, Lassie. She will have to 
eat a few more dinners first.” 

“ She won’t mind that,” said Laddie ; “ she 
is very fond of dinner.” 

“ She doesn’t love it as you do,” remon- 
strated Lassie. 

Sir John Penlyon left for Plymouth di- 
rectly after the doctor’s cheering announce- 
ment. He had business in Plymouth, he told 
Mr. Danby. 

“ Is the mother to leave Place now that 
the child is out of danger?” asked Danby, 
while his friend was waiting for the carriage. 

“You and the mother can please your- 
selves about that,” Sir John answered, coldly. 
“ I shall be away for some days. I have to 
see Barton,” his Plymouth solicitor. “ And 
I may go on to town.” 

“ Then she had better stay till the child is 

13 


194 


well enough for them all to go home to- 
gether,” Danby said, quietly. 

Sir John winced as if something had hurt 
him. Yes, the child would vanish out of his 
life — just as she had entered it — unless — 
unless he should bring his mind to forget 
the wrong done him by the daughter he had 
loved ; forget his stern resolve never to for- 
give her or to hold communion with her 
after that one rebellious act. 

His daughter had taken her own course 
without regard for his wishes. She had 
chosen the degradation of what to his mind 
was a low marriage — a marriage with a man 
whose father kept a small, shabby shop in a 
small, shabby street ; a self-made young man, 
who had climbed out of the petty tradesman’s 
sphere by the rugged, narrow path of pat- 
ronage and help from his superiors — helped 
to eke out the scholarship upon which he 
tried to maintain himself at one of the least- 
distinguished colleges in Oxford — a depend- 
ant at the beginning of his career, a pauper 
when he married. 

Sir John had remembered how, in the 


195 


heyday of his youth, he had crushed down 
and conquered his love for a girl of humble 
origin — how, adoring her, he had yielded to 
his father’s sentence that for him such a 
marriage could never be — that the future 
head of the Penlyon family had duties and 
obligations which must go before the ro- 
mantic love of youth. He had bowed to that 
decree, and he had sacrificed the happiness 
of his early manhood. The landed gentry 
of Cornwall are a proud race. The topmost 
branches of their family trees mount up into 
the dark night of British history when 
Mark was king and Tintagel was a place 
of royal revelry. 

Old as Sir John was, and in spite of the 
progress that Liberal opinion had made since 
Bossiny was disfranchised, he still believed 
in the obligations which his ancient race 
had imposed upon him ; and when his daugh- 
ter married the grocer’s son, he had told 
himself that he would never forgive her. 

During the five years that followed her 
marriage he held no communication with 
her, direct or indirect, knew nothing of her 


196 


whereabouts. Letters pleading passionately 
for pardon came to him one after another 
in the first year of her married life, but 
they were torn and flung into the waste- 
paper basket, unread, and by -and- by they 
ceased to come. 

A paragraph in a Plymouth paper told 
him of her husband’s death in a remote 
province of Upper India, where he had been 
working as a missionary under the S.P.G-. 
He had died of consumption, leaving a 
widow and two children. 

Sir John sent the paragraph to his family 
solicitor, and requested him to communicate 
with Mrs. Morland, and to arrange for the 
payment of an annuity of two hundred and 
fifty pounds, on the understanding that she 
was never to molest her father either by 
letter or otherwise. He was to hear nothing 
and know nothing about her, except that 
the quarterly allowance was paid. 

And this was all he had ever known until 
Danby’s folly had brought her children be- 
side his hearth, and had betrayed him into 
loving his rebellious daughter’s child. Grad- 


m 


ually, slowly, the secret of the children’s 
identity had been revealed to him. Little 
looks and words of Danby’s, Moppet’s unmis- 
takable likeness to the Reynolds picture, the 
fact of their Indian birth — one thing after 
another had brought about the revelation, 
and he knew that the innocent little creat- 
ure who had clambered onto his knee and 
clung about his neck was his rebellious 
daughter’s child. Well, the situation had 
been cleverly brought about by his friend 
Danby ; but Danby’s treachery should make 
no difference. He might be tricked into 
loving his granddaughter, but he would not 
be tricked into forgiving his daughter. 

So soon as Moppet should be well and 
strong again, mother and children would 
have to leave Penlyon Place; and in the 
meantime it was far better that he should 
be away. There must be no opportunity 
for surprise — no chance meetings between 
father and daughter. 

Sir John saw his Plymouth solicitor, 
looked at a new lease, spent a night at the 
Grand Hotel, smoked a morning cigar on 


198 


the Hoe, and went to London by the after- 
noon express. He stayed at a sleepy family 
hotel in Albemarle Street which the Pen- 
lyons had patronized for over a century, 
and he bored himself exceedingly next day 
at the Old Masters, where every Reynolds, 
Gainsborough, Romney, or Hopner served 
to remind him of the “ Shrimp Girl ” at Place, 
and of the little convalescent who resembled 
that famous picture. 

In the evening he dined with two or three 
friends at the Carlton, and discussed the 
prospects of the approaching session, which 
were pronounced of the gloomiest. He 
walked back to his hotel through a wintry 
mist which just escaped being a fog, and 
he wished himself back in the clear bright- 
ness of the Cornish coast, where the At- 
lantic surges make solemn music all night 
long. 

He had received no letter from Cornwall 
since he left, but he had no right to be 
surprised or offended at that. He had asked 
no one to write to him. He had not left 
Place till Moppet was pronounced out of 


199 


danger, and he had given Danby full power 
to deal with the mother and her children. 
His plan was not to return to his house un- 
til after they had all left. He thought some- 
times, almost with a shudder, how deadly 
quiet the rambling old house would seem 
when those young voices and those busy 
little feet should be heard in the corridors 
no more. 

He bored himself in London for another 
day, and went to a small dinner-party in 
Grosvenor Square, where the talk was all of 
the session, and where its prospects were 
pronounced of the brightest. Somebody re- 
marked upon the pleasantness of town at 
this after-Christmas season, before the open- 
ing of Parliament had brought many people 
back, the only time in the London year 
when small snug dinners and general con- 
versation were possible. Sir John remained 
mute, and thought that there could be no 
place more dismal than London in Jan- 
uary. 

It was nearly a week after he left Pen- 
lyon Place that he received the following 


200 


telegram as he was dressing in the morn- 
ing: 

“ Moppet has asked for you very often, and 
has fretted at your absence, not without 
danger to her health. Pray come back. 

“ Danby.” 

Danby again ! A trick of Danby’s to lure 
him back to his house and force on a recon- 
ciliation. He was vexed and angry with 
Danby; but he read that telegram twenty 
times over, making now very much, now 
very little of it ; and he left London by the 
morning express from Waterloo, after tele- 
graphing for his carriage to meet him at 
Launceston. In those days Launceston was 
the nearest station for Boscastle and Tre- 
vena. 

A long journey, throughout which — in 
spite of the mental occupation afforded by 
every newspaper that could be bought — his 
thoughts were haunted by the image of that 
sick child at Place, and could concentrate 
themselves on nothing else. The news of 
this wide, busy world was as nothing to 


201 


him — foreign or domestic, rumors of war, 
earthquakes, cataclysms, a general upheaval, 
weighed as thistle-down compared with the 
existence of one small child. She had asked 
for him, loving little creature, and he had 
not been there to respond to her tender 
yearning. Those little arms had been 
stretched out in vain. And she had been 
sorry — sorry even to sickness — a creature 
so delicate, so frail. He hated himself for 
the iron pride that had made him leave his 
house rather than brook the presence of his 
disobedient daughter. 

It was after dark when he arrived at 
Place. Mr. Danby and Adela were in the 
hall to receive him when he alighted from 
his carriage. It was too late for any rea- 
sonable man to expect to see children about ; 
yet he felt a pang of disappointment be- 
cause there was no sound or sign of a child’s 
presence. 

“ Well,” he said, fretfully, addressing him- 
self to Danby, after bestowing an automatic 
kiss upon Adela, “your telegram has brought 


202 


me back, you see. If the child wants to see 
me I am here to be seen ; but no doubt she 
is fast asleep and happy— dreaming of her 
doll.” 

“ I don’t know that. It is the want of 
happy sleep that has told upon her. She 
was doing wonderfully well, the lungs get- 
ting quite sound again, and her strength 
picking up, when she began to fret at not 
seeing you. She was always asking to see 
you. Where was Sir John? Where was 
the kind old gentleman? Why wouldn’t he 
come to see her? We explained that you 
were in London, would be back soon — but it 
was no use. However, I attached little im- 
portance to the matter. She was well cared 
for ; she had her nearest and dearest. She 
would soon be strong enough to travel. We 
all talked to her cheerily of the return home. 
Children are so fond of change of any kind. 
It was only yesterday that I began to get 
anxious, and that Nicholls began to fear a 
brain attack. She had slept badly for two 
or three nights — had awakened, frightened 
and crying bitterly. Yesterday evening she 


203 


became very feverish, and in the night she 
was delirious, and we were all uneasy about 
her. Hence my telegram. I hope I did not 
do wrong.” 

“You should have telegraphed sooner,” 
said Sir John, warming his feet at the hall 
fire, with his back to Danby ; “ that’s where 
you did wrong. I should like to see the 
child at once, if she is awake.” 

“I’ll run and see,” said Adela. “Mr. 
Nicholls went up to her room ten minutes 
ago, so I dare say she is awake.” 

“Is she so bad that Nicholls thinks it 
needful to see her in the evening?” asked 
Sir John, gloomily. 

“ One cannot be too careful in such a 
case, and Nicholls is always careful. That 
child’s brain is like touch-paper.” 

Adela came running downstairs. Moppet 
was wide awake and dying to see him, she 
told Sir John. 

He waited for no further invitation, but 
hastened to that stately room where so many 
notable men and women of the West Coun- 
try had been entertained, and which was 


204 


now occupied by a little figure which seemed 
absurdly small in the great carved four-post 
bed, an antique piece of furniture that looked 
like a Buddhist temple enshrining a very 
small idol under a tall and splendid canopy. 
The satin curtains of that ponderous four- 
poster had been embroidered by the women 
of the Penlyon family when homely Anne 
was queen. 

There was a young woman sitting on the 
farther side of Moppet’s pillows, almost hid- 
den by the curtain, and Mr. Nicholls was lean- 
ing against the tall carved column at the foot 
of the bed, looking down at the little creature 
with the flushed face and over-bright eyes. 

She turned her head at the opening of 
the door as quickly as a bird. 

“Sir John! Sir John! Sir John!” she 
cried, clapping her feverish hands. 

He was beside her in a moment. He 
leaned over the bed — not even looking at 
the face on the other side — and clasped the 
tiny form to his breast. 

“ My darling,” he murmured, “ my darling 
child !” 


205 


“ Why did you go away just when I bo- 
gan to get well ?” asked the innocent voice, 
so pure and true in its silver -sweet sound 
that it seemed like the very spirit of truth 
itself, a something supersensuous and divine. 
“ Why did you go away ? I wanted you so 
badly. 5 ’ 

“ What, Moppet,” he asked, hoarsely, 
“ when you had your mother ?” 

“ Ah, but I wanted you too. I told you at 
Christmas I love you next to mother. And 
I w r anted you very much, and it made me 
dream and cry in the night because you 
wasn’t here.” 

“ Ah, Sir John, you can’t play any tune 
you like upon such fiddle-strings as those,” 
said Nicholls, gravely. 

“ My darling, my darling !” 

That was almost as much as the old man 
could say. He sat down on the bed, and 
Moppet nestled into his waistcoat, as she 
used to do beside the library hearth, in the 
dusky hour before bedtime. She nestled 
there, and patted his strong hand with her 
tiny paw, and laughed and cried in a breath. 


206 


“ Why did you go away ?” she asked. 

“ God knows. Because I was a fool, per- 
haps.” 

“ This is mother,” said Moppet, plucking 
the curtain aside, and revealing a pale sweet 
face with timid questioning eyes. “You 
don’t know mother?” 

Sir John stretched his hand across the 
bed, and the mother’s hand clasped it, and 
the fair pale face bent down over it, and a 
daughter’s lips kissed it again and again, 
fondly. 

“ Now you know mother,” said Moppet ; 
“you wouldn’t have never known her if it 
hadn’t been for me, but I didn’t be ill on 
purpose, you know,” explained Moppet. 

No other word of peace or of forgiveness 
was ever spoken between Sir John Penlyon 
and his only surviving child ; but from that 
hour Sibyl Morland assumed her rightful 
position in her father’s house. He was not 
a man who liked long speeches or fuss of 
any kind, and he took no pains to explain 
to his kindred or his friends how it was that 





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207 


the daughter who had been lost was found 
again; but assuredly that episode of the 
Christmas hirelings drew him and his old 
friend Danby nearer to each other than they 
had ever been yet, with a friendship that 
neither time nor circumstance could weaken. 

Mrs. Morland took her place as a daughter 
in her father’s house, but not the first place 
in her father’s heart. That was occupied. 
Moppet had crept into the citadel by a 
postern gate, as it were, and reigned supreme 
there. Sir John’s affection seemed to have 
skipped a generation, and the grandfather’s 
love for his grandchild was warmer and 
deeper than ever the father’s love had been. 
Moppet was his Benjamin, the child of his 
old age, who had come to him when life was 
dull and barren for lack of love. 

Whoever might ostensibly govern at Pen- 
lyon Place, Moppet was the real master of 
the house, inasmuch as she governed Sir 
John. Happily she was a beneficent ruler, 
full of sweet carefulness and tender thought 
for others, which increased with every year 
of her life. In all his walks and rides Mop- 


208 


pet was Sir John’s favorite companion, tak- 
ing to her Shelty as a duckling to the farm- 
yard pool, or trotting with little untiring 
feet by his side as he made his morning 
round of the gardens or the home farm. 
Before she had been three months at Place 
she knew the history, character, and capa- 
bility of every horse in the stable ; and she 
became a little wonder in her capacity for 
remembering and pronouncing the Greek or 
Latin names of tropical plants and flowers 
in the long range of hot-houses. 

Laddie was despatched to an excellent pre- 
paratory school at Truro till such time as he 
should be old enough to go to Eton ; and a 
governess was engaged to help Mrs. Mori and 
in the care of her two little girls — such a 
dear old governess, warranted not to teach 
too much, and to see that they changed their 
shoes— being no other than that very Miss 
Peterson summarily dismissed by Mrs. Haw- 
berk, and whose dowdy figure moving quiet- 
ly about the house and garden made Sir 
John Penlyon feel as if he were twenty 
years younger, by recalling the days when 



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209 


his motherless daughters were little chil- 
dren. 

Visitors at Penlyon Place said that Lassie 
grew prettier every day, and that young 
lady’s stately manners and graceful little 
airs were the subject of much admiration 
from casual observers, while Moppet’s per- 
sonality was disposed of off-hand as “ inter- 
esting.” 

“ I heard Lady St. Kew tell her husband 
that I was a plain likeness of the 4 Shrimp 
Girl,’ ” she told her grandfather, after an in- 
vasion of distinguished visitors. “ You don’t 
mind my being plain, do you?” she asked Sir 
John, her deep-set eyes searching his coun- 
tenance. 

“ Mind ? Why, in my eyes you are the 
loveliest little woman in England.” 

Mrs. Hawberk, having made up her mind 
that her eldest daughter was to inherit a 
fortune as Sir John’s favorite niece, was 
somewhat disappointed at the turn affairs 
had taken; but Adela’s less worldly nature 
was incapable of any such unworthy feeling, 

14 


210 


and when her uncle helped to bring about 
her marriage with the man she loved by a 
gift of five thousand pounds, she felt that 
she had every reason to be satisfied and 
grateful. 

And what of bachelor Danby, without 
kindred or belongings in the world, drifting 
lightly down the river of life like a withered 
leaf upon a forest stream? Who shall say 
that Mr. Danby has neither home nor home 
ties when they see the welcome that awaits 
his coming, the grief that attends his going, 
at Penlyon Place ? 


THE END 



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